Sistah Pat

Dangerous combo.  I was asked to start home hospital schooling a 6th grader yesterday.  Beautiful little girl with long blond hair and huge blue eyes.  I’ve seen her picture.  Honor roll student.  On September 15th, she lost control of a bicycle while attending a picnic at a park with her family.  It didn’t have any brakes and she didn’t have a helmet.  She lost control of it as she barreled down a hill and wound up crashing into a creek and hitting her head on a rock.  Good thing her cousin was there.  She was face down in the creek and unconcious and probably would have drowned if her cousin hadn’t gotten to her quickly.  She spent a week in ICU and then a couple more weeks in rehab before being released as an out patient and now has short term memory loss.  She’ll be out of school for at least another six weeks.

I’m meeting her this afternoon.  I’m supposed to go to her house twice a week for an hour each time. I talked to her teachers to see about getting some of her work but they said she can talk to you and seem okay and thirty minutes later, she doesn’t remember anything about it.  Instead, I’ve decided to put together a placement test for the 5th grade and see what she can do with it.  After that, I should have a better handle on what I need to do for her.  I hope everything turns out okay for her.  You never expect these kinds of things to happen to your child.  It must be really hard on her parents.  She wasn’t wearing a helmet, no brakes on the bike, made the decision to ride it down the hill while wearing flip flops.  Of course she couldn’t stop it. 

It makes my problems seem trivial.  DIL called last night and said “Penny”, the CASA worker, picked up the kids and took them to the library after school and Scout has an overdue book from 2008 called “That’s Not My Monster”.  She said he can’t check out any books until that one is returned and told me to have DS look for it.  The conversation said a few things to me…the CASA worker is evidently helping her out with the kids after school.  She really thinks DS has nothing better to do than to try to find a book from 2008 and, she can’t afford to just pay for it.  Or…she can afford to pay for it and is trying to dump the problem on him.  Either way, it seems pretty trivial in light of children with brain injuries.  I told DS and he said he’ll try to find the book.  He still hasn’t really met the CASA worker except for the brief conversation after court a couple of weeks ago.  She was supposed to call him Sunday but she didn’t.  Scout says he really likes her and she and Mommy are good friends.  No telling what she thinks of DS but she could at least make an effort to work with him.  He called her yesterday after she didn’t call him Sunday and left a couple of messages but she didn’t return his call.  I like the suggestions that I get rid of Pele’s rocks by throwing them at DIL.  Still, I think that might be considered domestic violence…