Primary School Confidential (21 page)
Read Primary School Confidential Online
Authors: Woog
Have you ever been on the receiving end of a note like this?
Dear Parent,
It has come to our attention that several children in your child's class are packing parasites in their hair.
Commence panicking now.
Regards,
Class Teacher (who is now wearing a shower cap)
If so, you are not alone. At any given time, regardless of socioeconomic factors, the scalps of between 20 and 40 per cent of kids in Australia are being feasted on by head lice. (You can stop scratching now; you have probably been spared.)
I have had several experiences of nit-wrangling. It quite often starts when I observe one of the kids mindlessly scratching their
hair. Said child is dragged into the kitchen and deposited near some natural light, while I drag a teeny fine-toothed comb through their locks. Most of the time, we are in the clear, but on the odd occasion . . . BINGO.
Nits are nothing new; in fact, they have been around since Jesus was playing halfback for Nazareth. Head lice have even been found on the mummified bodies of ancient Egyptians.
As a wingless insect with useless legs, they are unable to jump, so travel from host to host by direct contact only. They feed on blood and can only live for a short time without a hit of human haemoglobin. It does not matter if you hair is clean or filthy. They do not discriminate or care.
Primary schools are a hotbed of infections. Let's have a look at some of the epidemics you are likely to encounter inside the school gateâstarting with my personal favourite . . .
GASTROENTERITIS
Known as gastro, it is my number one âgo-to' excuse when I want to get out of something. Telling someone you have gastro elicits immediate sympathy and your excuse is accepted without hesitationâbecause no one wants to catch it from you. The thing about gastro is that it is highly contagious. Spreads faster than wildfire.
If your kids are struck down by gastro, here are some handy hints for you, starting with: STOP EVERYTHING! Make sure you are in tiptop condition yourself as you are in for a rough ride. Then get yourself off to the hardware store and purchase:
⢠The protective clothing that people wear when they are removing asbestos from old houses.
⢠Two large buckets per child.
⢠An industrial container of bleach.
⢠Large sheets of plastic and duct tape.
And on your way home from the hardware store, stop at the chemist for some electrolyte products (for the kids) and then hit the drive-through bottle shop for some medicinal vodka (for you). The above items will not necessarily save you from a spin on the nauseous ride yourself, but at least you'll save the couch.
A GHASTLY TALE OF GASTRO
Of course, you can never really be prepared for gastro. It's just too unpredictable. This is tale from a fellow school mum:
Look, this is something I have never told anyone, mostly because it's just so embarrassing. But what the hell, here goes . . .
A few years ago I was recovering from a very nasty bout of gastro. I had no choice but to do the school pick-up. It had been twenty-four hours since my last brutal visit to the toilet, but I took a bucket with me, just in case a vomit emergency occurred during the thirty-minute round trip.
I pulled up to the pick-up zone at 2.55 pm and waited patiently for the kids to finish school.
My stomach started making all sorts of crazy noises, resulting in the most horrific-smelling fart. Not thirty seconds later, as I was basically being overcome with fart fumes, the teacher on pick-up duty tapped on my window to have a chat.
Without thinking, I wound the window down and BAM! The poor thing was greeted with the most hideous smell I have ever produced.
She sort of took a step back, while I started chatting in a very animated way, waving my arms around in a pathetic attempt to somehow get rid of the smell. Honestly, it was the most awkward three minutes of my life and NEVER have I been happier to see my two kids walk towards the car at 3 pm so I could get the hell out of there!
Trust me, my friend, you would have been discussed in the staff meeting that afternoon.
Kids with gastro are miserable to deal with. Taking a sip of water can trigger a barrage of bodily fluids from every available orifice, and you had just better hope that there is a suitable receptacle nearby.
An early sign that gastro has arrived at your school is a lack of appetite. This will shortly be followed by supreme vomiting and crapping, the likes of which you have never seen before. Your
child will complain of severe stabbing pains in the stomach; this is because there is an infection in the guts.
Soldier on, Mama, and cancel whatever you had planned for the next four days.
âSLAPPED CHEEK' DISEASE
I first encountered this little viral infection when I got a call at work. It was the daycare centre, asking me to come and pick up my four-year-old son as he wasn't feeling too great.
The next morning, said son wandered into the room and I got the shock of my life: it looked like someone had given him in almighty slap across the face.
Welcome to âslapped cheek' disease, a nasty little ailment caused by human parvovirus B19. It's contracted in the same way as most viruses: if an affected kid coughs in your face. The problem is, by the time it can be identified by the sufferer's red cheeks, it's too late; they have already passed the disease around.
There is nothing you can do but treat the resulting flu-like symptoms and wait for the next weirdly named virus to come and say hello.
HAND, FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE
High temperature? Sore throat? Cranky as fuck? Little blisters on your mouth, your tongue, hands and feet? These are the symptoms that herald hand, foot and mouth disease. Try to steer clear of the blisters, which can burst and secrete a liquid, which is one of the ways it is spread. Lovely! One redeeming feature of the disease is that it only a mild illness and doesn't hang around for long.
CHICKEN POX
My nemesis. One disastrous summer, I was responsible for spreading chicken pox to no fewer than six families. Well, it wasn't me personally, but my virus-ridden offspring. Of course I didn't do it deliberately! I'm not that much of an arsehole.
You see, we were holidaying with several other families, enjoying a glorious summer, with long days on the beach and long evenings of barbeques and beer. The kids all played together nicely; it was positively idyllic.
Little did we know the evil that was about to be unleashed.
A spot. A tiny spot. So small, all alone. Nothing, really.
But within an hour, it had a couple of mates. Uh-oh . . .
By the end of the day, my child looked like an angry red dot-to-dot puzzle.
Within weeks, the epidemic had spread to all the children who had summered together; even those who were immunised were not spared a mild dose. But it was the father of one of the holidaying families who was hit hardest. His face was probably described as an untarred road, and for two weeks he spent his time either in the bath or in bed.
Again, apologies to all those affected. And now, let's now put it behind us.
FEBRILE SEIZURES
There are more childhood diseases than you can poke a stick at. We've got your mumps and your flu. What about measles and whooping cough? And then you have your allergies and asthma. But I ducked and weaved around these common ailments when I
was a kid. I went for something much more dramatic, something more attention-seeking, something way more serious . . .
The febrile seizure!
I am not sure how it began, or even why, but sometimes I would heat up like a little radiator and then have a fit. Because I never saw it happen from the outside, I've had to rely on my mum to describe exactly what happened. Apparently it was not relaxing for her.
She has related times when she was driving along and glanced into the rear-view mirror only to see me behaving like I had been placed in an electric chair, with my eyes rolled back in my head. She would pull over and stick her finger in my mouth to hold my tongue down so I didn't swallow it. According to Mum, I damn near bit her finger off!
She took me to specialists all over Sydney, each of whom ran tests on me. Not one of these specialists could give her a diagnosis. So the seizures just became a part of my everyday life.
âMum, she's having a fit again,' one of my siblings would call out casually, and Mum would race in to find me having a seizure while said sibling calmly continued watching
The Wonderful World of Disney
. I would come to just in time to catch the end of
Herbie Goes Bananas
.
âMum, she's doing it again . . .' And Mum would race out to the backyard to find me fitting away while we tried to put the cat into a dress.
My febrile seizures were responsible for mum turning prematurely grey, so she says.
It turned out that this was not a serious condition, but it was potentially embarrassing, especially if you accidentally pissed your pants in front of your friends. After a few months of keeping
everyone on their toes, the seizures became less and less frequent, until one day they stopped.
I'd lost my party trick.
WORMS
Every few months, Mum would give us a special treatâan unusual kind of chocolate, which had a gritty kind of texture.
Coincidentally, this usually happened at a time when we were horrendously whiny.
âYou must have worms!'
Or had insatiable appetites.
âYou must have worms!'
Or could not stop scratching our bottoms.
âYou must have worms!'
Worms seemed to cop the blame for most things, and it is a tradition that has carried over to the next generation. But what exactly are they?
Threadworms are disgusting parasites that can grow up to 1.5 centimetres long. Apparently you can look for them around the anus, but I'm more inclined just to assume the kids are carrying them if any of the common symptoms occur, and treat accordingly. It is not the actual anus that worries me, but what I would do if I actually spotted a worm. Which I assume would be to hurl my cookies.
You get worms from direct contact with people who have them, or by touching doorknobs, taps and the like that have been touched by people who have them. And much like head lice, they do not discriminate.
The sad fact is, if you have kids at school, you will come across one, two or all of the wonderful extras that goes along with students sitting in close proximity, sneezing and coughing on each other, scratching their bumholes and opening doors. It is just a fact of life.
And unless you build a sheep-dip type contraption at your front door, such ailments are here to stay.
*scratches head*
