Donating

On a lighter note than the last entry, here's a conversation from my last period Precalc class...

Steve:  Would you like to donate blood?  I have to get 10 people to sign up.
Paul:  Will I get paid?
Me:  If you get paid, then it's not donating.
Paul:  Would anyone pay me for donating blood?
Me:  The Red Cross won't but maybe somebody would.
Steve:  Someone in a back alley maybe.
Paul: Well, what else could I donate for money?  Do we have two livers?
Me: No, but your liver does regenerate, so you could donate part of that.  But I don't know if anyone will pay you.
Paul:  What about a kidney?  I'd be willing to sell it on the black market.
(I gave up and walked away at that point and when I returned I heard...)
Paul:  The problem with that is that 18 years later someone might walk up to me and say "hey, I'm your daughter!".
Kevin:  Or you might end up having to pay child support.
Leah:  I think you get paid more for donating eggs anyway.
Paul:  Hey, that's not fair!

I decided not to explain why eggs might be worth more.  I'd already cleared up the biological fact that we only have one liver - it was well past time to get back to math.

Tough Day

Yesterday was a tough day at school.  One of our students who graduated last year had been diagnosed with cancer during his sophomore year.  He was in the hospital for most of the next 3 years and received two bone marrow transplants during that time.  Amazingly, he was able to graduate and was in remission at the time.  We heard in the fall that the cancer had returned and earlier this week he passed away.

I never taught this student but I often saw him in the math office last year getting help to pass Precalculus.  He was polite, kind, funny, and hard working.  Just by talking to him you would never know what he had been through.  Like many children who have been that sick, he hoped to become a doctor one day.  As recently as November he was still looking ahead to college when he emailed his old math teacher to get some review material.  That's the anecdote that gets to me the most - all of that potential and those future plans cut short.

We are going to have a prayer service for him and his family tomorrow (one of the perks of teaching in a Catholic school) which will provide closure for many in our community.  I have to remember that many of my seniors who were close to him will be grieving for a long time to come.