Things that happen in class...

[intertext]

So, one of my students had a "petit mal" epileptic seizure today during Peer Editing. Hardly anyone, except me and the members of her editing group, even noticed, which is extremely surreal. She came to a stop - she was just... stopped, and I went up and said, " *student* are you okay?" and she quite obviously wasn't, so I was thinking "oh, gee, what shall I do???" and I just touched her and spoke to her and apparently that was the right thing to do because she came out of it and said she was okay... But it made me think "fuck - what do I do if there was a genuine emergency?" Of course, nowadays you can depend on one of your students having a cell phone (in fact, I have a cell phone in the bag I have with me), but even so - what would you do??

Comments

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

You can't swallow your tongue. :) You might occlude your airway if your muscles go limp and your tongue falls back, but you're not going to swallow it.

If there's a risk of someone biting their tongue, putting something between their teeth is probably a good idea, but you need to be careful. Not all seizures are like that.

[superfoo.livejournal.com]

Well, thank you public service announcements I have been mis-informed :)

I'm assuming that someone biting their tongue or blocking their airway is rather unlikely? How do you tell? I must note that the only seizures I have witnessed were those my old dog suffered from, and he had really bad ones all the time, and his tongue would always stick out.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

It depends on the kind of seizure.

If they're going all rigid and stuff, they might bite their tongue, and putting a bit of their shirt or something between their teeth is probably a good idea. Also good to make sure that there's something between their head and anything hard.

[superfoo.livejournal.com]

This is very good to know.