For future pasting.

This is going to be a long-ish email, probably. I'll probably spend a bit of a lot of classes working on it if I don't manage to get it finished before I leave.
The biggest example of stress I can think of offhand would be the cables on the Tacoma Narrows bridge in Washington state. At least, mechanical stress. Personal stress, I'd have to place myself higher than I usually would on the list about now. After yesterday afternoon, I realized something; I don't feel entirely safe at school anymore.

Since sophomore year, Friday has made four incidences involving myself and nuts, two of which provoked symptoms of anaphylaxis:
The Carolina Renaissance Festival trip, Sophomore year: Someone on the bus had a bag of trail mix in my vicinity, and I definitely started to react to that.
The last junior-senior Prom, where a junior took me as her friend date. More on this later because I don't think i can compress what I have to say on it enough.
These past two incidences in Genetics class, the latter provoking symptoms and getting to the point where my pediatrician told my mom to take me straight to the ER.
The first was an accident, luck, and me being too shy to speak up and tell someone about it.

The third, despite ample reiteration by not only the school, but by the sub as well, I can grudgingly put down as an accident as well.

Prom. We had been calling for weeks in advance to try to get in touch with the people setting it up and managing the food. We finally get through not long before the event. Trail mix, that chocolatey, berry-laden, and especially nutty snack that many enjoy. Clearly, this put us in a bad position. Somebody didn't do their homework and at that point if I were to step into the TD Centre's ballroom, I would likely not leave in anything but an ambulance. We have to fight to get the snack changed, going so far as to invoke my 504 and remind someone in the administration what can happen if such a plan is violated. It may seem extreme, but that's the length we had to go to so I wouldn't be excluded from my prom. And they tried to make us feel guilty for it! I get it's a lot of effort and logistics that go into setting up an event like this, but it wasn't our fault someone didn't do their job right and caused this to be a problem. When they were going through the list of people going to prom and all, I should have been on there, probably with allergy noted. That marks the first time I was uneasy with how the schools administration approached the issue.

Friday morning, despite a wonderful lecture by Mrs. Rooks several Mondays prior and following the prior incident, a sophomore girl got out a bag of pistachios and began to snack on it. She (Mrs. Rooks) caught it before I did, sent me to the nurse. When I got there, I took some benadryl and called my mother to inform her of the incident. After a few minutes of observation by the nurse, I returned to class. I was called back to the nurse where I saw Mr. Mayfield, the nurse, and my mother all. They check up on me, and that discussion I will return to often, and in favour of not repeating it every time, I'll not address it until later. It should be said that I was itching excessively at that point, and attributed that to a symptom. At the end of lunch, after sitting through tests in 3rd and 4th, I felt a lump in my throat. Knowing that the closing of the throat is a very serious symptom indicative of a serious anaphylactic reaction, I got some more benadryl from the nurse while walking back to class. Later on, I texted my mother about it (I have second lunch and we were still in test mode in 4th). She consulted my doctor and he told us to go to the emergency room. Sometime during 5th, I would say around 1:30ish, I was pulled out and taken to Greenville Memorial. Was there until after 4:00 and a lot of that time was spent sitting and waiting. Triage said I seemed alright, then eventually a doctor saw us and confirmed that I was not gonna die. Always good news. Spent about 15 minutes at home after that because my grandmother was worried about me and wanted me to stay with her for a bit to stay her concerns.

Onto that conversation in the nurse's office. It went as one might expect, with Mr. Mayfield concerned about my grades, the nurse concerned about my health, and my mother concerned about me. Mr. Mayfield was more concerned with keeping me in school, implying greatly that I should stay at school unless it's an emergency and I need to go home, in which case he would excuse/forgive/etc the absence in his official capacity (I can't recall the official wording.). Knowing I had tests in the next two classes, and feeling like I could take it, though I admit feeling a bit pressured into the decision, I decided to stay.

Sunday night/Monday morning, I didn't fall asleep until after 5am because I was stressed and restless about the day to come. (Sorry for nodding off a bit after lunch, Mrs. Mccuen.) It dawned on me at that point that I was afraid to go to school over the issue. My mother had been trying to say that the student could be punished for bullying me, and I didn't see how that made any sense until that point. 4am, I sent her a text saying that I didn't want to go to school and about how I felt. She convinced me to go around 7:30, waking me up (I'd overslept by 45 minutes)

Yesterday afternoon, due to the severe weather alerts, I stayed at the school rather than walk down ICAR like I usually do to get home. Mr. Mayfield interacted with me outside, asked me if I was well and all. I didn't go into some things about how I felt that morning, and was more concerned about what happened to the student, which of course he wasn't gonna tell me. My mother arrives to pick me up, catches him outside and goes in to talk to him. He hadn't returned her call. She came back after about ten to fifteen minutes a bit miffed. She got the impression off of him that very little was being done about the issue, which really doesn't surprise me. In earnest, he seemed more concerned about my grades than my safety and status as a living human being back in the nurse's office. In addition, despite his claims while I was in the nurse, it seemed he deemed my trip to the emergency room "unnecessary" and wouldn't excuse/forgive it. We have a doctor's note I guess, but now i'm at 10 absences in a lot of classes. May 8th (odd coincidence) my parents are taking my siblings to a homeschool trip down in Atlanta. That's too far away for them to feel safe leaving me alone, especially with the events of recent. I knew I would be doing seat time for Genetics after it, as I have a lot of absences in it regardless (I've missed a good few mornings this year, and had several doctors' appointments. I don't know the numbers, and I can't recall if the portal's back up for me to check.), but I wasn't expecting to have to do a lot more of it. And frankly, I shouldn't have been absent on Friday. The incident never should have happened, and I should never have had to go to the emergency room. I don't find it fair that I'm having, more or less, my medical condition held against me in this latest absence. I had informed those teachers on my way out on Friday that I would be absent just so they knew.

So far, I've been impressed with how you as teachers have handled the issue when it came up. If it wasn't for Mrs. Rooks noticing it before I on friday, I would not be in the healthy state that I am currently in today. It's just... I'm not sure the administration has my best interests in this matter at heart, nor my safety. I know there's only a few weeks left of school for me as a senior, but I thought these issues should be brought up. I feel unsafe with how the administration treats this issue, first making me feel guilty with prom and subsequently due to the discussions I have had with Mr. Mayfield as of late. One of these days, it's gonna hurt someone. The nurse has admitted that there are many epipens in his keep. He hasn't admitted to what these people need them for, but I'm sure there are other students in your classes presently who carry them for this or that, or people you see in the halls. There were ambulances outside when I left on Friday, and I initially thought they were from Memorial for myself. I don't know still who they actually were for, but someday they'll be out there for someone else for these reasons. There's nothing you can really do to stop entitled students who think they don't have to follow rules they don't like, but there's everything that the administration can do to handle it. And like I said, based on how I've been treated, I don't think they're doing a very good job at all.

Please do not share this with anyone but the other teachers and myself yet, unless I tell you otherwise. I'm not sure how to handle this situation yet, still working this out. I just knew getting my thoughts out was going to be the first step.