Most of you know that Nate starts kindergarten this year.  I've known it was coming and made all of the preparations I know to make.  Last week I was overly stressed about completing Nate's 504 meeting and training the staff on how to care for him.  I was literally in tears for days and poured my heart out to my friend, Shay.  I told her how hard it is to navigate all of this alone and that I was feeling completely overwhelmed.  Not many friends understand, really understand what it takes to care for Nate.  Truthfully, only another parent with a T1 child can know the stress and fear that I have about sending Nate to school and trusting that someone else will keep him alive.

The next morning as I prepared for my meetings and got cleaned up for the day I heard the front door open and in walked Shay!  She came over to go with me to the training and to the 504 meetings for both Sophie and Nate.  I had been quietly crying that morning and was seriously thinking to myself --- I just cannot do this -- is it too late to look into homeschooling?  I know Shay would do anything for me, Ian and for my children but I was blown away by this seemingly small gesture.  Having someone by your side during a difficult time always makes it a bit easier and this was no exception.

She stayed with me through the training and the 504 meetings which lasted over 3 hours all together.  The training went great and I'm feeling good about our school nurse and her back up which is the office manager (whose son happens to have T1).  In the 504 meeting we met with the nurse, the VP, the school counselor, the PE coach (also the head of all specials teachers), both of Sophie's teachers and Nate's kinder teacher.  It was almost like we were old friends! They wanted to know all about Nate and Sophie, both of their diagnosis stories, but mostly they wanted to know what they needed to know and what they needed to do to keep them both safe and healthy.  We laughed, we cried and we put plans in place.  Shay chimed in and gave her opinion and most importantly helped me keep my composure in a very important yet emotional meeting.

Shay knows what I do for all of my babies, she knows I don't sleep, she knows about Crohn's and diabetes and she knows how passionate I am about both.  She's done research on her own about T1 and CD and is pretty knowledgeable but I think even she was emotionally exhausted after the training and meetings.  She now has even more of an understanding of how much has to be done to prepare a school to keep both of these sweet babies safe.

I'm so lucky to have Shay in my life!

On Friday she posted the following message to me on FB: