Fuck Today (Part 1)

general topics
990

Possibly, though I suspect the next conversation with the vet will involve euthanasia.

Around two weeks ago she got a completely clean bill of health from the vet, who chalked up some of her issues (like loss of bark) to age. Damn the internet, I had to go snooping, found something that matched some of her stranger symptoms, and brought her back for another look.

When our last dog (who was mainly my dog, raised from a puppy when I was still young and single) died, I was so affected by the illness and death that I strongly opposed getting another. I desperately didn’t want to go through that again. My wife and son got the current one while I was off lecturing in the midwest, and she is really my wife’s dog. However, my son is away at university and my wife is on the mainland caring for her sick father, so I get to deal with this on my own. Dammit.

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991

Hug.

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You sound like my husband, although I wholeheartedly agreed. She had dementia and flipped her night and days. My husband slept on the floor next to her for close to a month to keep her from pacing. It was incredibly hard for him keeping her settled and letting her go. It’s been two years and we still miss her lots.

I will keep you and your girl in my thoughts.

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993

I’m so sorry. It’s always sad when you have a pet on the edge of death.

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Not really a Fuck Today, more of a follow up from earlier comment: I’ll have two different psychiatrist appointments over the next week, and may be diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum. Last appointment I didn’t have my thoughts together and I was asked to come for a second appointment, but since then I’ve been able to read a lot more and write a description of my symptoms with a mind map etc., so I don’t have to rely on explaining it verbally in German (I’m not confident in my German production at all, as I rarely leave the house and only produce English writing, even though I’m reading German all the time). There are other things too, but I can live with them for the time being.

It took four sittings to get through it and of course I didn’t keep score, but just about everything except for relationship failure and substance abuse is true. Recently, I realised that in the past 15 years, I’ve been:

A bookshop assistant
A warehouse operative
A fireman
In charge of a warehouse
A student (passed!)
A publisher
A data entry worker
An electrician’s assistant
A student again (passed!)
A waiter
Security wrapping suitcases
A teacher
A student again (quit within a year)
A student again (quit after a year, and with a certificate for getting that far!)
A teacher at a different school (quit after a year, but not really my fault)
A translator (ongoing, but with multiple agencies)
A student again (ongoing)
A stay at home parent (ongoing)
A care assistant (quit, no time)

It’s not like I didn’t like any of these jobs - in fact, in every one I’ve been told that I’m actually pretty good at it. Stuff just keeps coming up.

During this time, I’ve also considered or been told to consider becoming:

A marine engineer
A deck officer
A diplomat
A cook
A plumber
An electrician
A heart surgeon

During this time, I’ve also studied or started studying:

German
Spanish
French
Chinese
Catalan
Irish
Dutch

That’s just the languages, but you get the idea. I’ve also moved to a different country in order to live there for at least three months 11 times during these 15 years. I may stay here for another few years, but we’ve also considered moving to Belgium, UAE, Argentina or a few other places. I guess we’ll have to see. I’m surrounded by enablers.

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Yeah, if she heard that is there any way to get asylum for this child? Disgusting.

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I have to have a meeting with my daughter’s phys-ed teacher, and it’s stacking up a ton of anxiety triggers for me

  • teachers make me nervous, still, even though I’ve been out of school for 20 years. The impulse to please, and not make any trouble or draw attention, has not gone away
  • the meeting is in french, a language in which I am not fluent
  • the guy is a serious dick
  • I still haven’t figured out whether to focus purely on the medical stuff, which is essential, or to also bring up the fact that he seems to be running his class like a boot camp

A week ago, my daughter had a nosebleed in school, and this teacher told her to tilt her head back. After that, she passed out for a couple seconds and then threw up, and everyone freaked out a little. I brought her to a hospital where the doctor did some tests, confirmed my assumption that we’re just dealing with vasovagal syncope, and sent us home.

So. . . on friday, we sent a note saying she’d be skipping phys-ed because she still wasn’t feeling well, but we also mentioned that if she has a nose bleed in future, she should not be tilting her head back. (this is the advice we got from every doctor & nurse we talked to at the hospital, as well as being what we thought was generally the standard of care since, like, the mid-eighties.)

The teacher got pissy, told my daughter he felt insulted, and that we shouldn’t be telling him how to do his job.

So I requested an appointment with the phys-ed teacher and asked to have the principal present. But now I am stressing the fuck out, because stressing out is what I do. For about 20 minutes after I first heard about his reaction on Friday, I was in full pissed-off mother bear mode, and I’m glad I requested the appointment while I was still in that mode. But that mode is not my default by any stretch, and I just really hope the guy acts like a total jerk in the meeting so I can summon my rarely seen inner badass.

My critical, non-negotiable demand is that if my child starts feeling dizzy or losing her vision, she needs to be able to lie down. This guy has a thing where all the kids have to run, non-stop, for 7ish minutes, but if one of them stops running then all of them get an extra minute added on. The longest I’ve heard of this going on is 12 minutes. So what worries me is that in this environment, where she’s been told that she can’t stop running and group punishment is expected if she does, I can totally imagine her getting dizzy, not stopping running, and then eating the floor at high speed.

If the guy’s approach to nose-bleeds wasn’t stuck in the 1970’s that would also be great.

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Indeed.

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Do you have a note from kiddo’s physician? That’s the sort of thing a dickbag like this has a hard time arguing against. Doctors sort of trump teachers in that way.

Know how gym teachers have that stereotype? Yeah.

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The teacher is an M.D.? Oh wait, that’s not his job, right?

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As a funny update, I live near a pond. Dude went ice fishing rather close to my house a few weeks later, and just kept staring at my house. He was getting drunk out there with a buddy. They did not see me. Escalation failed, I ignored him utterly, other than to make sure he was off my property. Didn’t call the cops, just grabbed my camera.

I got pictures of them emptying their coolers, bottles and all, into a Public Water Supply. If he ever comes back, those will go to the state, and he will get probably a 10K fine.

Escalation is his call, he tried and failed. I will always keep the upper hand with a known jackass.

Who wants to make a miserable screw more miserable, really? He was too big a coward to knock on my door. He can go screw. Also, nothing from this for >2 months. I assume he has found a new person to try to bully, since his bait went untouched.

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If the teachers fee-fees are more important than your daughters health, skip meeting the teacher and go straight to the administration with a complaint. Insist she no longer be in his class. INSIST.

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Know how gym teachers have that stereotype? Yeah.

Not to mention Frenchmen.

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We didn’t get anything from the MD. I printed out this fact sheet from the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

Unfortunately, it’s a lot harder to find fact sheets about vasovagal syncope. I’m planning to present him with a written letter to summarize what my daughter needs to do to manage an attack if she feels it coming on & what people around her can do to support. I’m debating about making him sign a copy to convey how serious this is.

@AcerPlatanoides The school principal will be present at the meeting. Either he will be more receptive at the meeting, or I’ll ask to have both my kids pulled out of his class.

Unfortunately. . . I have a hunch about how this goes. I’m a straight / white / early middle aged / relatively presentable looking dude, and I’m not a student in his class. So assuming he’s the standard issue kiss-up/kick-down kind of bully, he’s probably going to be just sweetness and light when I go to meet him.

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Good, but maybe the PE teacher should not be? Insist on meeting the adminstration away from the guy, as they have to work with him and will not go as far if he is in the room.

Which I bet he will insist on being. But YOU ARE THE PARENT.

This is about your child’s treatment by the school, not about one teacher, as I see it.

Ask to record the whole proceedings, as well.

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Really?

If this guy is getting pissy with your kid because of information you relayed to him from medical professionals then he is a nasty bully who is targeting the weakest person he can find rather than a professional.

I’ll tell you what I’d do I wouldn’t actually do but what I fantasize about doing what I think about the situation. And that is I would say, in the meeting, “The fact that you got pissed with my daughter because I relayed information from medical professionals tells me that you are a nasty bully who targets the weakest person he can find rather than a professional. If you have a problem with medical advice I have received then I would like you to raise your concerns with me, not attempt to bully my daughter.”

Yeah, no kidding.

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1007

Ok, I am going to go against the grain here and say to tread carefully. This guy sounds like a bully asshole who will make nice to you and the principal but then take it out on your child in class. This is a minefield, so tread carefully. You need to get the principal on your side. And you’ll do that with medical documentation. Pay for a letter from your GP, so that its on file at the school. Stick with that and only that, don’t talk about his feelings, stick to medical advice only, they can’t argue with that.

Also, as someone who has suffered monthly nosebleeds since puberty, since the 80s, everyone should know to tilt forward by now! Thats seriously stupid.

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Re: meeting with just the principal - I don’t disagree, but I also don’t feel like I can rely on her to be effective. By all accounts she’s scared of this particular teacher, and tends to rely on avoidance tactics. By having her present in a meeting with the teacher, I can push her to do her job, and prevent her from avoiding or delaying.

Given the choice, I’d just switch my kids to another school, but that has proven to be difficult. My other daughter actually switched to a school with the English school board, but the bus trip was an hour each way, and the homework load was about tripled. After three months, she decided she’d rather come back to the bullshit at the local school. Switching within the french school board is basically impossible (we’ve tried) because all the schools are overfull.

Right now my strategy is to have a concise letter detailing what’s going on medically, as well as a request that if he has a problem with any notes we send him, he needs to take that to us directly. If he accepts that, then I wait for the next incident before pulling the kids out of his class. Because, I agree, he sounds like a bully, but I don’t feel like I can pull them out just based on what’s happened so far. And I don’t believe there’s any other phys-ed teacher at this school so it would be pulling the kids out of phys-ed entirely, not just requesting a switch to a different class

@Missy_Pants - that’s a good point about having a letter from the GP. I wish I’d asked for something written when we were at the hospital but I didn’t even think of it at the time. I guess it would be good to get a regular GP involved in long term management now anyway since syncope is now established as being not a one-time thing. I don’t expect that I’m going to be able to get anything from a physician before I meet with the school though, so I’m going to have to rely on a written note in which I say what I heard the doctor say…

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Maybe you can ask for her to be excused from the class until you DO get it sorted with the GP? That’s totally reasonable.

And like @Missy_Pants said, his feelings are the least relevant part of the discussion. I know you know that.

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Ugh… this guy sounds like a real piece of work… what is he a former drill instructor?

Good luck! Just remember that he’s in the wrong. if she needs to rest, he needs to let her. You aren’t out of line for insisting that the medical advice you received be followed. He’s out of line for ignoring it.

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