Medical emergency in class? Check

So I taught Thasha’s sophomore class Monday since she is back in America for a while. I thought I was doing well teaching them, I had some of them from last semester. Then I made these two girls stand up and talk in class. They were doing a telephone conversation and the first girl finished her lines. So the second girl started to speak, then she faltered a bit. I thought it was because I made her talk with her partner, but then she said, “I’m sorry….I’m…” and passed out on the floor. Naturally, class was over then and the entire class circled around her while the people next to her held her tongue and rubbed her chest to soothe her and maybe wake her up. They put water on her forehead because she started to sweat. Then she started making some groaning noises and I thought she was going to have a seizure. I sent some students to go get help and it arrived pretty quickly, not that they did anything. They brought in a stretcher and a couple of hard cases of stuff but they didn’t put her on it or check her out. They didn’t really do anything, then the nurses left. The students had done more than the nurses did. She came to eventually and her classmates stuck by her and I felt really dumb because I couldn’t have done anything else that they hadn’t already done. What else can you do? Turns out, she has blood sugar problems and occasionally passes out. Sounds like hypoglycemia to me. I’m glad that it wasn’t anything worse. I have no idea what I would have done if it was something more serious.

So the moral of the story is: when in China and something medical happens, you’re pretty much on your own. I’m really surprised the nurses didn’t have any smelling salts or glucose tablets or anything. Actually, no I'm not. I'm in China.

Luckily, the student is fine now, except perhaps a bit embarrassed at having passed out in class.