As if covid isn't bad enough, let's start high school in the hospital!

The last entry in Our Story.

In August 2021, while my husband was out of town, our oldest son said that he wasn't feeling well enough to eat dinner - this is VERY unusual for him - and soon after that he started throwing up and couldn't stop. In the middle of the night, I ended up taking him to the emergency room where they decided he had appendicitis and admitted him to the hospital. We were back home within like, twelve hours.

But over the course of the next 3 weeks, he didn't get better. And at his 2-week post-op visit, I discovered that he had lost 10 pounds. While not something that would be alarming for me (I have 10 extra pounds that I could totally lose), this was extremely alarming in regards to him. When you are nearly 6 ft tall and 126 pounds, you can't afford to lose 10! It took us another week or so but we ended up back at the emergency room because he had developed an abscess that was down in his pelvis and was pressing on everything.

Now all of that is horrible stuff, right? No mom wants to go through that or have her child go through that. But the icing on this cake? He was admitted to the hospital for his abscess surgery on his 3rd day of high school. That's right, he attended 2 days of school and then went into the hospital for 6 days. He had to get a PICC line (a semi-permanent IV that goes straight into the larger vein near your heart and can be used for nutrition as well as medication) because everyone was so concerned about his weight. We were concerned that he would miss another 2 weeks of school after the hospital stay. There was no way I was sending him into COVID school with a PICC line, so with some help from my brother we got set up with a tutor - who wasn't very helpful. He seemed to think that he was going to physically pick up assignments and bring them to our house....like it was 1994 or something, but I guess at least they tried?

But our luck had finally turned and rather than having to stay home another 2 weeks, he was only home for 1 week. He missed a total of 9 days of school...and then he was automatically disenrolled 🙄, so on his first day back to classes he wasn't on anyone's roster. Fabulous.

But then, most of the assignments were excused from the beginning of the year and he was really doing pretty well in most of his classes.

I think he has a 3.79 right now. He is struggling a bit with Lit class, but some of that is the teacher not following his IEP and some of it is him not asking questions or advocating for himself.

Oh, and science? He got an A in his first term.

He's still working with his Wilson tutor once a week. I know it's not enough, but he's making slow progress and I worry about putting too much of a burden on him. He will bump it up to twice a week during the summer and hopefully progress a little faster. He's quite accurate now but still lacks fluency.

He did start to struggle a bit more with Lit during the second term and we pulled together an IEP meeting and reworked all of his accommodations so that they made more sense. His middle school SPED teacher did not organize accommodations (and even added accommodations that were NOT necessary and even detrimental), so it was good to do that. But I still worry that I'm not holding the school and district accountable for reading instruction that they should have been providing - should STILL be providing. They are really legally obligated to do that. But, I haven't asked for it because I hate making waves. I know I should ask for it. I know that the school should be funding the tutoring that our son is receiving.

So, this blog/website is, in part, the way that I am fighting for the kids who don't have the resources to do what we have been able to do. Whose parents don't have the funds or the knowledge of where to start even if they did have the funds. I'm hoping to help by doing what I can.