What used to be easy now is difficult.

This week Cody has earned the right to do what our son’s school calls an ABC event on Friday. Basically kids with good grades, and some other criteria, get to go to a shopping area about an hour from our house.  Seems like an event he should be able to do.  It’s just shopping and eating lunch at Panera Bread or Chipotle or something like that.  So very harmless. So what is the big deal why can’t he do these things after all he’s just a kid trying to be a kid. 

Therein lies the rub.  So let’s start with the trip to the shopping center.  It’s an area that has a Dave and Busters and a large number of places to shop or eat nothing wrong there.  They will be walking around for several hours.  Doesn’t seem too bad but if he has an issue the school is not required to give him his emergency shot.  This is a school field trip but the RN is not going on the trip.  So even if he carries his emergency pack no one will know how to use it.  So wait I said that wrong he is not allowed to actually carry his shot on him because he is “at a school function”, but the school won’t give it to him if he has an emergency.  The school is required to carry the shot but not actually use it if he needs it.

It’s likely nothing will even happen but what do we do if something does happen?  The shot needs to happen within minutes and the school won’t do anything but call 911.  Not to mention there won’t actually be school chaperones close enough to do anything, they let the kids wander around for several hours basically unmonitored.  It is going to be his 13-year-old friends that will need to make a call if something happens.  

So again do we just risk it, wait for the ambulance to get there and hope they know exactly what to do?  We know they don’t know what to do.  Our own EMS in our own city doesn’t know what to do let alone another city that we aren’t even sure if an AI person even exists in that city.  

So now my wife will take the day off, and to not embarrass my son (since parents don't go), she will just walk around the shopping area away from him and come help him if needed.  I am sure you probably think it is over kill but imagine a diabetic not getting Glucagon in an emergency situation.  Or better yet imagine the school refusing to use an EpiPen if one of their peanut allergy kids came in contact with some nuts and starts going into anaphylactic shock?  So he’s going to that field trip and we will just have to cover him there because the school won't.

There is some legislation that was recently passed in Oregon we are looking at to see if we can get it passed here in the KC area that makes schools have someone on site that knows how to give the shot.  There is so much we want to do and needs to be done   wish I could spend my entire day just doing this to make life easier on families with AI. But for now we will focus on keeping Cody in good hands.

Some of you make be thinking we are being too scared about it all, too cautious.  But my question to you would be what would you do?  I am not saying make that easy call from the cheap seats.  Really think about it.  What if your child had a disease that could kill him on any day at anytime?  Do you think it would change how you look at the world and their life in it?  What if today is the day God decides it is their time?  Did you do everything you could do not only to save him, but to give him a meaningful life?