Great Meeting!

I feel like a ton of bricks have been lifted off my shoulders!

Today's meeting was a success. I met with Kacey's teacher, nurse, both principals and the school guidance counselor. As a group, we looked over Kacey's blood sugars and talked about her performance in the classroom. We also discussed the upcoming SOL tests and how we planned to help her though them as best as we could. I also talked about her pump and some of the alarms that need to be watched. Everyone was so caring and compassionate. I held my composure until I had to talk about how frustrating it is to manage diabetes. I ended up in tears trying to explain how I hate the fact that I can't know what she is feeling. They all agreed that we really don't know what Kacey is feeling but we CAN make the accomodations for her. The principal did bring up the fact that Kacey is in a gifted class because last year she was doing gifted work but all of this seems to have caught up with her and so I agreed that maybe her placement for next year should be in a slower pace class. This will take off some of the pressure that she is feeling to complete more work in a shorter amount of time.

She got her report card today....
Science .....A
Social Studies.....A
Writing.....B
Reading..... C
Math..... C

Not as bad as I thought it was but like her principal stated....those C's are in the gifted class.

So where do we go from here?
Our next step is calling the Educational Consulant for Kacey's Endo office. I gave them the card that was given to me at our last appointment. We will make an appointment for a meeting with the EC and she can give us suggestions on what we can do. This is a learning process for our school because Kacey is the first child with diabetes to come through there and need the help. There has only been one other boy with diabetes that was in our school and his parents managed his care, not the school. This is not something they are used to dealing with. So I have to be patient and I am confident they are going to look out for Kacey's best interest and help her get through this difficult time. They are going to make some special arrangements for her during the SOL testing. The first one being, she will NOT have to test on the computer. She will get her test on paper. This will allow her to highlight with a marker and write on the test instead of having to do everything in her head. She will be in with her teacher during the testing and her test will be broken up into parts. After each part, if she's not feeling well or her blood sugar is too high, then they will not move on to the next part. Her teacher also suggested that on testing days, once the test was over, I take her home. This way she can physically rest after the test and she won't have to do any other work the rest of the day.

She is going to be just fine and eventually we will get this whole diabetes thing under our belt and the teachers will be pro's at suspecting highs and lows. I really am lucky to have Kacey in a school that is willing to work with me, her doc office and anyone else that can shed light on how difficult diabetes can be for a child.