When Michelle Digman, a teacher at the Pinellas Park Elementary School in Florida, was teaching her students about the circulatory system last month, all she was likely expecting is that her students would grasp the concept of how the human body works.
It turned out; however, that Digman's science lesson would be a lifesaver for one of her pupils, 10-year old Tashawn Roberts. For her lesson on circulatory system, the fifth grade teacher was teaching her students how to find and check their pulse first on the wrist, but when it is time to find the pulse in the hollow of the neck, Roberts encountered a problem. He could not find his when he placed his two fingers on his neck. Instead of finding his pulse, Roberts found a lump.
"He says I can't find my pulse and I say let me see if I can help," Digman related. "He said, 'Well I feel something else, so we felt around his neck and there was a lump."
Digman then instructed her student to show the lump to his parents when he gets home. That very night, Roberts' parents took him to the hospital.
Robert's "special assignment" from Digman proved to be a lifesaver as the lump would have possibly cost the boy his life. A specialist at the All Children's Hospital had the boy undergo MRI and found that the previously undetected lump in his neck was a golf-sized aneurysm that was about to rupture.
Aneurysm occurs when the artery wall has weakened causing part of it to abnormally balloon out. Aneurysm can grow big and burst. When this happens, bleeding can occur inside the body, which can be fatal or result in brain damage.
Roberts underwent a two-hour surgery wherein doctors replaced the problematic vein on his neck with one taken from his leg. The boy, who has an IQ of 135, did not attend school for two weeks while recuperating after the surgery but when he finally got back to school, he hugged the teacher who has helped save his life.
Interestingly, the circulatory system is often taught at the end of the school year but in an effort to improve the school's teaching, the Pinellas County School District modified this year's curriculum so the science lessons would be better aligned with the math and reading curricula. Thus, Digman taught the human body to her class early this year.
