General Discussion > Share Your Badassity
Kind of an obnoxious brag
CindyBS:
It has been a very rough year for my family.
My oldest son, age 14, is extremely intelligent, but also has a learning disability in writing, Asperger's Syndrome and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (very common co-diagnosis with Asperger's). He always struggled in school, despite testing off the charts in terms of aptitude. We've had good and bad teachers, years that went well and not so well, but school is not really set up for this type of kid. Seventh grade ('15-"16 school year) was particularly bad. Even though he reads 5 grades levels above his age, he still barely passed Language Arts.
Then our world fell apart in the summer of 2016 when he was diagnosed with an aggressive subtype of Leukemia. He went through 9 months of horrific chemo, 1 brutal infection after another. By March it was clear the chemo was not working as hoped and we decided to do a bone marrow transplant. He had his transplant in June. All the time he was not able to attend school and the district gave us the most wonderful home instructor, who totally "got him" and his varying abilities. He had 100% individualized instruction and she really worked on his learning disability in writing. She is also a cancer survivor herself, so she was so understanding about the cancer end of it all.
So many victories lately!
1) We are +93 days from his transplant and he is doing really really well - no signs of cancer.
2) He is still on home instruction b/c he is too immunocompromised to go to school, but he is in classes and gets work at home. He is now in 9th grade. For the first time ever - He is in ALL ADVANCED CLASSES!!! Including an AP class. On his AP History test he just got an 85%!! That is with NO help from an adult with the writing and not having attended a single day of class. He is holding his own!!
3) I had to stop working to take care of him so our income went down at the same time many of our expenses went up. OUR NW INCREASED BY MORE THAN $100K SINCE HIS DIAGNOSIS!!!! Most of that was due to a booming housing market and the value of our house went up a lot in one year helped by the stock market increases.
The obnoxious part is that I can brag incessently about #1 and get support. I am finding bragging about #2 doesn't go over as well - especially to parents of healthy kids who cannot achieve that. #3 - no way I would say that to anyone IRL.
Thanks for letting me brag!
lexde:
What a year. Honestly, congratulations on all fronts. You deserve it. I can't imagine how scary and difficult everything must have been for you. And I'm so happy to hear your son is doing so well in class! You should be able to brag about it -- no doubt he's been working hard, too.
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SwordGuy:
Bravo to you, your kid, and the new teacher!
joonifloofeefloo:
All freakin' fantastic!!!!!!!
Gosh, nothing obnoxious in there at all. Big celebrations, for big reasons :))))
What a breath of fresh air to hear such news, too!
marty998:
Congrats - great lessons in resilience there.
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