And Now For Something Different

Woah, I didn’t mean for this to become the all cancer, all chemo, all about me, all the time blog. Sorry. But wait, maybe not so sorry. I mean, this is MY blog and so, yes, I’m going to write what’s on my mind and these days, it really is pretty much all cancer, all chemo, all me, all the time.

Except when it isn’t.

I had parent/teacher conferences with Liv’s teachers yesterday.

They were basically what I expected.

She loves to read, she excels at spelling. She hates math. She needs a lot of supervision and yet…just the other day, she sat at her desk, her teacher sat six feet away at her own desk and Olivia worked on a project for twenty minutes without stopping to doodle. Olivia couldn’t not see if her teacher was anywhere nearby because her desk (O’s desk, that is) faces away from the teacher’s desk. They did that because Olivia and another classmate have bonded and if they can see each other, they giggle and act silly all day long. Now they’re back to back. Smart teachers!

(Tangent: The classmate that Liv has bonded with is in first grade. This makes sense to me because emotionally, I think that Liv is about 6 or 7 years old. So the first grader is her emotional peer. I take heart in this. It means she CAN connect with peers, they might just always be younger chronologically than she is. And that’s okay.)

She’s come a long way in the six or so weeks that she’s been in the smaller classroom. She’s working more independently (most of the time, we still get reports that she had a tough day and didn’t stay on task but they’re fewer and farther between.) Her handwriting has improved immensely. There is less doodling on her homework and classwork pages.

She’s still in the typical classroom for science and social studies. Her teachers wanted to pull her out for social studies but realized that if they did, she’d be getting pulled out often enough that it might raise some red flags with the state. So…no. We’re going to keep things as they are.

I mentioned that I’m actually okay with that because I truly believe that Olivia gets something, even if it’s very subtle, out of being around her typical, age-appropriate peers. It might not come through for years yet, but being with these kids, even for a couple of hours, during a couple of subjects, will help her in the long run. Sure, she might need extra help with the academics, but school is about more than the grades we get. Her teachers were both glad to hear that I felt that way because they agree.

I ended up spending twenty minutes with O’s newer teacher, the one who works with her most closely. Then I headed down to meet with the typical classroom teacher. She’s awesome and wanted me to understand that she wasn’t giving up on Olivia even though she’s only with her for two subjects.

I told her I understood that and never thought she didn’t want Liv in her classroom. I pointed out that Olivia is an enigma that we’re all still trying to figure out.

We talked about Liv for maybe ten minutes then she started asking me about my treatment.

It turns out she’d faced a cancer diagnosis not even a year ago and we compared notes about chemo and radiation and recovery. She didn’t have breast cancer, so her chemo was completely different. She never felt sick and didn’t lose her hair. But she was stage 3, which is SO SCARY and is currently doing very well.

And look at that, we came back full circle and are talking about me and cancer again. How about that?