NoJoMo 23: The Whole of the Moon

The first class of swimming today was the third grade, which has a kid who has epilepsy.  I actually was his assistant in several classes when he was in first grade.  Someone needs to keep track of him at all times in case he has a seizure, something that we get extra money from the county to do, as it is a disability.  In the three years I have known him he has not once had a real seizure.  He gets lots of little absent seizures, where he seems to just disappear into his own little world for a minute and you can see his eyes jiggling.  But never a clonic seizure, or what was formerly called a grand mal seizure, what you think of when someone has an epileptic seizure.

You all can see where this is going.  The kids were swimming back and forth using a kickboard.  We had my boss, who was working with those kids who could swim in the deep end.  I had the the kids who couldn’t swim, or were not good enough to swim in the deep and the epileptic kid, Patrick, had his assistant there, who was on land and observing.  I was on one side of the shallow end helping a kid who really, really can’t swim with a basic crawl kick when I look up toward the other end of the pool and see Patrick next to the side of the pool, completely under water and floating sideways, head swaying backwards.  I yelled to the assistant, "Patrick!" and took two steps around the corner of the pool and launched myself into the water. 

One more lunging step in that shallow end and I was on him and pulled him up by has armpits out of the water and onto the side, where my boss was waiting.  I stayed in the water and positioned him in the stable side position (I’ve no idea what we call that in English), one leg bent, under arm up, head resting on that arm.  We checked for a pulse and that he was breathing and that his mouth was clear as he continued to seize, though not violently.  I turned and told the other kids to sit on the side and then we asked the assistant what the time was for his seizure.  She wasn’t totally sure but it was approaching a minute so we sent her for the medicine.  If his seizure goes more than a few minutes you give him some medicine. 

By the time she got back he had stopped seizing.  He was still totally out of it though, but was breathing and seemed like he hadn’t swallowed too much water, though he had some spit up around his mouth.  We have a big mat that we laid him down on so he could come back to earth and slowly but surely he started to gain some coherence.  He was a bit wobbly on his feet though.  We called his parents and I got him dressed.  And that was that.

What is cool about this is that it showed us that we did exactly what we were supposed to do, calmly and swiftly.  I don’t even remember thinking at all when I jumped into the water and grabbed him, which is exactly as it should be.  I responded just as I have been trained to do, even though it has been years and years since I have had to actually jump in to save anyone.  

Made for an interesting morning anyway.

Videos!

I was listening to the album Dusk by The The in the car today.  Mighty fine album.  I got to the last song which I guess I haven’t paid all that much attention to in the past.  It’s a really great song and I love the chorus line: "If you can’t change the world…change yourself"  True, that.

 Over the weekend my British friend and I were going through the songs I had put on my phone as potential ringtones (right now my ringtone is an edited version of American Idiot by Green Day that cuts out the intro and just begins with the lyric "Don’t want to be an American Idiot!") and this song was one of them.  This is such a fine, fine song.  One of those that just gives me chills when I hear it.  It’s The Waterboys with Whole of the Moon.

 One of the members of The Waterboys was Karl Wallinger who formed the band World Party.  This song was from one of their late nineties albums.  It’s a great sort of Lennon-esque song, that is sadly most remembered as a Robbie Williams song as he had a huge hit in Britain with it.  I prefer this version.

Zaphod