Today was my official back to work day. Just ignore the week I spent last week setting up a classroom and the two days this week tearing one room apart and moving to another room for a different grade level at a school about 1/2 mile away. Welcome to education. Teachers are very, very, very flexible in these budget times. In more ways than you can imagine.
Anyways, today was my first day with the ENTIRE staff of my new school. The old school knew of my melanoma diagnosis. Some I told directly and the rest found out through the caring and sharing that family members do. The support they gave me made last week and this week so easy to tolerate and deal with. There was no over-the-top sobbing and sympathy. You know how I feel about that. There was the general consensus of "Do you need anything?" and "That sucks." I loved the staff I was with because of that reaction alone. They are willing to help and brutally honest that melanoma, indeed does, totally suck. Not a single person said, "Well, I knew someone who...." or "I heard that...." Call me totally selfish and cruel, but I didn't really want to hear that. I just needed to know that I had support if I needed it and they understood "it sucked." And that's the important part. They were there for me without smothering me. And the district I work for said I needed to move. Sigh and double sigh!
So, I am now with a new staff. A staff that has absolutely no idea what my summer was like. And to be totally honest, I'm not sure how I feel about that. One part of me is completely thrilled that this new staff sees me as a new teacher who comes "highly recommended" from the bigwigs. (Yeah, that was good for my ego to hear on Tuesday). The other part of me wants the staff to understand why I am not so quick with hugs because I still have two sets of stitches and I managed to "bruise" my arm incision yesterday.
I thought long and hard today about this conflict I was feeling. It seemed to come down to whether they see me as a new teacher on their staff or as a teacher who has melanoma (aka is fighting cancer). Ok, big breath...... I'm not sure how I want them to see me right now. Part of me is done, totally done, with being a patient but the other part knows I cannot ignore what has happened the last two plus months. I will never, ever be free of the melanoma diagnosis. I just want to be NED (No Evidence of Disease).
So, I am at a stalemate as it were. I am NOT inclined to inform my new "family" of my melanoma status but I know that news will filter to them eventually. The good and bad of the school district I am in means that we are truly a family. Some times dysfunctional, but mostly good and loving, albeit on the smaller side compared to surrounding communities (aka San Francisco and San Jose). I would like for their initial judgement to come from how I am as a teacher, how I educate the most important members of our community, and how I work with them as fellow educators. When the news comes that I have/had a disease that is life altering, I want it to be an asterisk to my label as a teacher. I want to be known first as a teacher and second as someone who got dealt a crappy set of cards in the cancer poker game. After two full, heavy months of being a "patient," I'm ready to get back to being a "teacher."
Maybe it's Karma that I changed schools. Maybe it's a higher power caring for me. Maybe the kids at this site truly needed me more or I needed them more. Who knows? The next 190+ days will tell me. At least, that's what I am counting on when I went "back to work" today. I was a teacher today. Not A Patient. Not A Melanoma Target. Just simply a teacher.
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