I was never told in any of my elementary
education classes in college that the day might come when my sweet and sassy kindergarteners
would get to SAW my cast off…but this week, that day arrived! I probably wasn’t
prepared for that scenario because in no other school can I ever imagine a
situation where that would happen, but if you hadn’t noticed, I do not teach in
an ordinary school!
Every year before the orthopedic surgeries
start on our patients with bowed and windswept legs, the kindergartners and I
traipse down the gangway and down to the dock where we enter the rehab tent. We
get to be a part of the training for the orthopedic surgeries, which involves teaching
the rehab team and day crew how to put casts on patients. We get to help out
with this because kindergartners have small legs, so practicing on them doesn’t
take up too much of our plaster supply, and also because a lot of the patients
the rehab team will be casting will be about the size of my kindergartners.
Every year I ask if I too can get a cast, and every year I am told that I
cannot because my legs are too big and they can’t waste the plaster (only thing
my legs have EVER been too big for!). Am I the only one who always wanted to
have a cast, but never wanted to actually get hurt to do it? Well this time by
dream came true!
Before going down to the rehab tent, we
talked as a class about why some patients needs to have casts on their legs and
what the rehab team does. I showed them pictures of patients with casts on and
pictures of my previous students getting casts put on.
I told them what a
special opportunity this is that we get to be the class to go down and help the
team learn how to cast. We get very amped up and excited! We enthusiastically walk
down to the tent and everything is thrilling…until they bring out the saw,
which they use to cut the casts off. It always gets very real in that moment.
That’s when the rubber meets the road because that is the moment each student
must decide for him or herself if he or she will actually go through with this
plan. Getting the cast put on is
exciting, but they know that if a cast is put on, it must come off and there is
no way around the saw. I have had students back out at this point, because that
instrument makes a rather scary sound and it looks sharp.
The rehab team is
always so sweet and encouraging and they let us touch the blade as they explain
that it won’t cut their skin and they explain that it just “tickles the cast
off” (meaning it vibrates through the plaster).
This year, after showing the cast saw, they
asked for a volunteer and one of my little guys immediately was in. He hopped
up on the table while seventeen crew members gathered in a semi-circle around
it and the lead orthopedic surgeon got to work explaining and demonstrating on
my student. He held very still and was a great example!
Meanwhile, my two girls
found the big rehab balls and had a grand time rolling around the entrance of
the tent. I wasn’t sure that my girls were actually going to go through with
the casting.
When the surgeon was done demonstrating on my first little guy, he
told the crew members to group up to practice themselves and I asked which of
my girls wanted to get on which table. They happily obliged and hopped up to
have their own casts done.
Once they were settled in and I had taken a
sufficient number of photos (hundreds!), I got to get on my own table and have
the process done to me! I gave my little guy my phone camera and he happily
walked around taking pictures of all of us.
I was a bit concerned because as I was
getting my cast put on, my girls were having theirs taken off. I am generally
right there when they get the casts off in case they get scared and need a hand
to hold, but I couldn’t be because I was stuck on my own table and in my own
cast. I kept sending my sweet little guy to check on the girls and to ask if
they were ok, and they were! What troopers! After they had all had their casts taken
off, the rehab team leader asked them if they wanted to come cut off Miss Beth’s
cast! Wait! What?!? I could see this going horribly wrong, but if course it
didn’t and they were so thrilled to get to cut through the fiberglass and
plaster (along with my friend Allan, the rehab team lead). They each got to
take home their plaster cast at the end of the fieldtrip!
What a special opportunity this was for
everyone involved! The rehab team got some little legs (and one larger one) to
practice on, and we got to be one step closer to understanding what it’s like
for our patients who wear those heavy casts, not for thirty minutes like we
did, but for so much longer! Those kiddos are absolute champs for coming to a
strange place, trusting complete strangers to repair their legs and lead them
through months of rehab to teach them to walk again. In a setting where the patients
can be a bit scary to us kindergartners because they speak a different language
and wear hospital gowns and have dressings and tubes and wires, it’s oh so good
to have one more experience in common that helps us walk in their shoes and brings
us just a little closer together.
*I know I’ve said this before, but I’d just
like to end with a BIG shout out to the fantastic crew members, like our rehab
team, who make time for our littlest crew members and let them know they are
just as valuable and just as much part of this crew as anyone! What a blessing!
