M: "Do you know why I'm shaky?"
Teacher: "Why?"
M: "Because Allah loves me."
M is a young girl who has been diagnosed with Adrenoleukodystrophy: a genetic disease that eventually leads to death. Months ago, she was a happy little girl who's abssessed with the color PINK. Her pinky jacket reflected on her cheeks and lips, making her smile an unforgettable one. She speaks perfect English, and her cognitive skills are just great. She was the spoiled one in class.
Now, M's condition has got so much worse. She can barely sit on her wheelchair for an hour. The pinky-ness faded away, being replaced by a pale yellow color, and black circles around her eyes. You can barely understand her attempts to speak, and she struggles to breath. Her smile has dissapeared. You feel like she's slowly letting go of life as she asks others to hug her, and kiss her, telling them that she loves them so much. Perhaps its her way of saying goodbye...
Now the challenge we're facing is: telling her mother that M needs to rest at home and stop coming to school. She has been told before, but M's mother gave fake excuses such as M being a spoiled girl, or how much she loves sleeping, and so on. But at the same time, she is not the one to blame. She already lost a son with the same disease, and she's just hanging on to her little surviving one.
Teaching a dieing student. I can't explain the situation we, as teachers, are currently in. Sometimes I feel like M needs to rest, its just too much for her to be coming to school every single day. At other other times, I think of how she might be feeling alone at home waiting for her time to die. What a feeling. But as M said, it's because Allah loves her.
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3 comments:
I've visited this post three times already and every time I click on the comment link, I stare at the box - I don't know what to say.
So many emotions are swirling in me right now, after I read this yet again. I will come back and post a comment when I know how to put my feelings into words.
I'll be back Tinks.
Bookworm: I tried so hard in this post not to describe the emotional breakdown we're all going through. Its just that the decision is very hard to make coz you can never imagine yourself being in M's place. Struggling between your own health or being around people you care about.
Its a very difficult situation. We all knew that her disease leads to death. But we never thought it might be that soon. Kilshay beed Allah.
Goosebumps!
Thanks for sharing your experience. extremely heartfelt.
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