Oct 10
6
Maggi & her teacher Mrs. Ann
Every parent deals with it… the “first day of school jitters”… and I’m not talking about the kids’ jitters, either. I mean those jitters that every parent gets when their child starts their first day of REAL school. (No, day-care does NOT count!) When your child turns 5, the butterflies start, the nervousness sets-in, and basically parents lose their minds… and it doesn’t matter how many kids you have, it’s the same for each one of them.
What we go through as parents of special needs children, however, is much, MUCH different. It can only be described as sheer terror. Especially if your special needs child has a low immune system and can catch a cold 4th hand! What I mean is, if you have been around your child who has been around a child at school who coughed in their general direction, then you come around Maggi, Maggi may very well get sick. It’s happened before, but we try to make sure it doesn’t happen again… unfortunately, no matter how many times you ask someone if they’ve been around people who are sick, inevitably, it happens. Fortunately for us Maggi has not had to be hospitalized in quite some time because of it, though (thank GOD and knock on wood).
At any rate, this creates a conundrum for us. You see, we WANT Maggi to actually go to school, experience the social interaction that only other kids can give her, have structure in a setting away from home, and basically allow us to take a breath through the day a little. However, if we send her and she gets sick from another child, it could land her right in the hospital where we don’t want her to be. Now, it’s not just that simple with Maggi. When Maggi goes into the hospital from a cold, it could kill her. Maggi doesn’t have the antibody to fight the common cold or flu like most people do, so a cold is potentially life threatening (and we’ve almost lost her a couple of times due to a “little cold”, too).
So here we are, stranded in the middle of a Catch 22… and she JUST had surgery, too, so her immune system is focused on healing, not fending off a cold.
After a meeting with some of the staff at Maggi’s school, we came up with a solution – Maggi would do hospital homebound schooling! …at least for a while…
Currently, Maggi gets 3 hours of schooling (from her wonderful teacher Mrs. Ann). Maggi’s only in her second week, so we’re still all trying to adjust to how things are going to work. Mrs. Ann comes out 3 days a week for an hour each visit. She’ll be bringing an OT (occupational therapist), a PT (physical therapist) and a Speech therapist with her on different occasions to evaluate Maggi for additional therapy on top of her “normal schooling.” Also, Mrs. Ann will evaluate Maggi for a few weeks and make recommendations to the school if she thinks Maggi would benefit from additional time per week.
Our hope, as parents, is that Maggi will be able to get a couple of hours a day of schooling and/or therapy, thus giving her more of the school experience. As time progresses, and when Maggi is ready, we’ll see about trying to integrate her into an actual classroom for a modified school day (meaning she would not necessarily go all day long).
But for now, we’re glad that Maggi can get some kind of schooling from someone other than us. It gives Maggi more variety in her day, and it helps us to step back and take a breather for a short time on those 3 days.
