Ketchup, and Mustard

I have a new little friend.  He is pokey in the halls at my new job, and always lagging in the line.  I often find myself saying, Catch up, catch up!  And I now know why his teacher from Kindergarten dressed for Halloween as "Ketchup... and Mustard!". 

So, there have been quite a few changes in my life, and Alex's too.  I jumped ship at the Hospital, swam away from my pirate compatriots, and landed on the calm island of North Shore Community School.  This is my son's school, that I have been in love with since 2009.  I came up with the crazy idea last spring at Alex's IEP meeting, where we hammered out the plan for his education for the next year.  It was such a great meeting, with over a dozen excellent professional folk, that I walked away saying, "I gotta work here some day.".  Then it hit me.  There would be a special education position opening up in my son's grade.  Would it work?  Could I work at the same school, in the same grade?  I knew they were planning to split up my little friend and my son, so there was no danger of being in the same classroom.  I started a quite interview process with everyone I knew at the school to see if they thought I would be a good fit.  All went well.  It was a long spring and summer, wondering if I could pull it off, if I would get hired, and if I could really leave the hospital.  It seems the answer all around was yes.

It was surprisingly hard to leave the hospital.  Even though it was a super high stress position, with weird risks and crazy situations popping up all the time, I still had made a home there.  True, the family was very dysfunctional.  VERY.  But I had my peeps.  My survival network.  And the worst thing was knowing I'd be abandoning them.  The second worst was not knowing if I'd be abandoning them or not, since it took forever for the interview/ hiring process to happen.  I did not know the final answer until I was on vacation, on the 15th of August.  I went from nervous wreak, to elated abandoneer.  And then the bubble burst.

At exactly the time I was getting hired, my husband was experiencing sudden hearing loss.  He woke up right before the 15th of August with vastly reduced hearing in his left ear, with replacement ringing, buzzing, and pinging that just about drove him nuts.  By the time my hiring was sinking in, we were off and running to Doctors, Audiologists, ENTs, and MRI nurses.  When he wasn't having invasive procedures done, he was coping with the loss of half his hearing and the addition of all that replacement noise.   Apparently the ear does not like a vacuum, and replaces lost hearing with random noise called tinnitus.  Random, bizarre, maddening noise, that you eventually just get used to.  The Ear, Nose, and Throat guy we trusted most said Kevin had a 20% chance of getting enough hearing back in that ear that he could possibly get a hearing aid.  It was a random virus that was attacking his nerves, and this happens about 4,000 times a year in the US.  The amazing end of the story is that he got back almost all of his hearing.  After searching out a best practice solution, Kevin got a steroid shot into his eardrum within ten days of onset.  This did the trick, and he now has loss in a 15% range.  We will know in the next few months if he should go for a hearing aid for that range.  For now we are simply grateful.

By the time that started to resolve I was into my last stretch at the hospital, that morphed right into my first days at North Shore Community School.  I was a bit shell shocked, but happy.  I was hired as a Paraprofessional, and I actually look after two kiddos on the Autism Spectrum in my boy's same grade.  I made the transition pretty well.  Now, six weeks later, I am finally getting a good handle on my new job.  There have been some challenges, but no kids with Hep B have spit in my mouth, and I have not had to tie any children down with leather restraints.  It is almost heaven. 

At home we are settling in to the new routines as well.  I have much less free time than before, but I don't really need recovery time from my new job, so it is all good.  We have a ton more family time, and have had quite a few adventures already.  This weekend is a long weekend off, and next weekend we are going "winter" camping in our wood stove tent while attending the annual Winter Camping Symposium.  My next post will likely be about Alex, and what I am learning about school and Autism.  I will just say that it is all good, and I am on a positive learning track.  Plus his classmates are adore-able, and I am also in love with second grade in general.  That is all for now, I hope everyone is having a good Fall.  All the Best- Beth