As some of you may know Spring Semester is well underway, we are in our second week of school which means it has been my first week of being in the classroom as a Teacher Education Candidate! What this means is I have begun the first of three stages of Practicum and Student teaching. I will be graduating in Spring of 2021 so I am on the final stages of my college career.

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Practicum I (where I am right now): I will spend 90+ hours in a High School classroom with my mentor teacher. I get to teach three lesson plans to my students and record myself for two of them. I am very excited for this semester.

For the rest of the term I will be spending my Monday/Wednesday mornings at a High School here in the Las Vegas valley. In this classroom I will work with my mentor teacher to learn how to implement classroom strategies, write and use lesson plans and other parts of the teaching field that are taught through experience. I am very excited to see where this semester will lead me.

Practicum 2 + Student teaching: Next semester (Fall 2020-Spring 20201) I will be placed at a school where I will finish out my degree. I go back with the teachers in August and will finish my degree in April 2021 with a May graduation.

On top of my Practicum I and my full course load of 18 credits (6 classes) I am also Substitute Teaching. So far I have had the opportunity to sub at:

• Eight grade English — twice
• Elementary school librarian
• Fourth grade English/social studies

With substitute teaching, I can teach at any of the schools here in the valley under any number of subjects. I am still in the beginning of my substitute teaching and have been mostly placed in English classrooms. This tends to be where I spend my Fridays, in the classroom

“Spring” into Suffering — Spoonie jokes

I can talk about school for hours but since my health was the major reason for this blog I am going to bring it back to that.
My roommate Megan got to accompany me to my last Rheumatology appointment at the beginning of January so she could experience the fun of specialist doctors.
As always my doctor looked over my chart, asked if I was still taking my medications and that was that.

I have had some new developments/realizations about symptoms that I experience. These include:

• Falling down: my legs have been giving out on me randomly (it’s a fun time)
• Extremities falling asleep: my hands, arms, legs and feet have all been falling asleep sporadically without warning
  • This has happened not only after sitting down for long periods of time but also when just standing in my kitchen
    • which lead to me falling down
  • I can not sit “criss-cross applesauce” anymore, my legs will fall asleep in about 3 to 4 minutes
• My body temperature has dropped severely: I am always cold. I never used to be like this, my hands were always warm but now they are cold as well
  • hence why I have been wearing sweaters constantly — I am FREEZING

I have chosen to stay on my cocktail of medications in hopes to help with my disease. The medications I take do have some intense side effects but they happen to be the best for what I have (collagen vascular disease). My goal is to get my pain and symptoms under control with my prescriptions and then work to find holistic ways to supplement them in the future.
Currently I am too busy, broke and stressed with school to be looking into different types of treatments, remedies and solutions. I can barely keep up with my course load.

What is a flare

I realize this has become quite a long blog post but I would like to give a little bit of information for those who do not know what an autoimmune flare looks like.

A flare is when my autoimmune disease “acts up” and cause pain. In a flare my immune system attacks my healthy tissues. This causes pain, swelling, and inflammation of the collagen and joints in my body.
The most common symptoms of flares for my body are:

• Body aches
• Joint pain/aches
• Skin rashes
• Fatigue
• Fever
• Swelling (body and joints)

What Causes a Flare?

I realize this has become quite a long blog post but I would like to give a little bit of information for those who do not know what an autoimmune flare looks like.

My body will go into flares at any moment of any day. They are unpredictable but I do know what activities can cause flares ups more often than others. Activities that I have noticed cause flares for me are:

• Doing/dealing with something that is emotionally taxing
• Strenuous activities
  • hard work outs
  • lots of walking/running
    • i.e. going to theme parks, renaissance fairs, summer camp, places where I am walking/running and moving around a lot (not that I live a sedentary lifestyle
• Being on my feet for long hours
• Being awake for long hours — lack of sleep

What happens next?

Now that I have had a taste of what teachers do on a day-to-day basis (not nearly as extensively as I will by the end of PI and PII) I do have some worries about my health.

When you are a teacher there are things you have to do that take a physical toll on the body:

• Standing for long periods of time
• Walking around the classroom to check on students, work, tests, etc
• Early days, long hours in the classroom, late nights
• Meetings, plannings, extracurricular activities
• Stress and anxiety (that I already deal with)

I will have to deal with this for the rest of my life. However, I have a great support system of friends, family and doctors who are here to help me to live life to the fullest.
Just because life doesn’t go how you thought it would doesn’t mean it’s not worth living

That was all she wrote….

Thank you for following along, I will try to upload more often

Till next time

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