I have just realized (right now, at 3am) that my current 2nd grader is going to complete BA by Christmas, barring another major interruption to his schooling. He’s the most math-gifted of my four mathy kids. He’s where he’s at despite having missed over half of the school days in 1st grade and numerous days from 2nd grade to medical issues. He is eager to get to take AOPS classes like his older siblings. And I have just now realized that is probably not going to be a feasible option past prealgebra. Without a self-paced option, I can’t see being able to keep up with the pace of an AOPS class with all of the ups and downs of fatigue and nausea and the random, sudden appointments or further tests when a new symptom or an off blood test comes back. Maybe if we get some periods of stability between treatments, but there’s no knowing if that will happen or how long they might last. How does a languagey mom like me facilitate an advanced math education for a kid who can’t take outsourced classes?

I’m pretty anxious about it. I am doing my meal planning further out so I can grocery shop less frequently, and we are replacing optional family activities that are further away with close things, like going to the local park, and replacing treats out with treats at home, like having homemade milkshakes instead of stopping for ice cream. But honestly, there really isn’t much we can do. The vast majority of our driving is for dh’s work or ds7’s medical care. I already had to change our budget a few weeks ago to give more funds for groceries and gas, and that required giving up a goal I had for the year to put the minimum amount into the kids’ 529 accounts to get our state’s tax refund on it. It is likely that further gas hikes are going to cut into our ability to fill the IRAs this year. We have a road trip planned in May for my brother’s wedding and to see the other side of the family. We’re packing our food as well. Dh and I are each getting gas money for our birthdays, and we have a vacation fund we had been setting aside some money in with the intention of taking a big family trip next year after ds7 finishes his chemo. Instead that is going towards gas, too. I fully support the ban on Russian oil, but it is going to hurt. I really hope our government is willing to allow measures for energy independence to help ease the pain.

I am finally getting my cherry trees! I have been wanting to put some small cherry trees in the narrow strip between the driveway and the neighbor's property since we bought this house 2.5 years ago. Things came up the last two Springs that prevented me getting them in, but I have ordered the trees, and they are supposed to be ready to pick up from the nursery on the 28th!

So, are the kids on your property or not? It sounded like they were in the HOA’s nature preserve area, but then at the end of your post you say you want them to stop coming into your “backyard area”. Does that mean they are on your property, or just near it? Because if they are trespassing on your private property, that is an entirely different matter than if they are enjoying the hoa’s shared neighborhood property near you.

An artist on Facebook under the name of “I draw childhood cancer.” made this for the sick kids still stuck in the basement of the children’s hospital in Kharkiv, now with no power.

I’m on a Facebook page for parents of children with gliomas that has many international members, and they’re saying Russia is targeting hospitals. There was a picture of pediatric cancer patients sitting in the hospital basement as the hospital was under bombardment.

Ask if they have movie goggles at any location near you. At the hospital where my son gets his MRIs every three months, he spends his 1.5 hour scans watching a movie with the goggles and headphones. But the hospital system has only one location in the region with the goggles, so we always book for that location. It is (understandably) in high-demand, so we have to book far out and sometimes go in on a weekend or later in the night. But so long as he’s got the movie going, he can manage without anesthesia.

Yes and no. When dd13 starts high school, we will start nine consecutive years of having high schoolers, the middle five of which we will have two or three at a time. There isn’t a private school that’s an option, but going to the charter as tuition-paying students might be possible. It would cost less to pay tuition for one kid than to lose the secondary insurance. That would be about the same as tuition for two kids.

The high school in our town has a reputation for bullying, though I’ve heard from a (elementary) teacher friend in the district that they’ve been making a lot of progress on improving that situation. A few families we know have done the district transfer process to send their kids to school in the town south of here, which is supposed to be a bit better academically but have a much better school environment. As far as academics, the schools have some good programs for agricultural science and auto repair, but if you want to take a math class beyond algebra 2 you can get dual enrollment credit for taking it at the community college, if you are an upper classman and at least 16. (My petite 13-year-old could easily pass as 11 and is taking AOPS Intro to Algebra B this year. I wouldn’t feel comfortable sending her to the cc even if they would allow it.) I spoke to a counselor at the middle school a year ago when I was overwhelmed and considering enrolling the kids in school. I asked if it would be possible to do something outside the normal sequence for a kid who had already completed the math they offered there, even if it meant me providing an alternate curriculum or transportation to the high school for a certain class. She said no, but I could try asking the principal for special permission to allow her to (re)take prealgebra as a seventh grader instead of the normal eighth grade. She didn’t know if they would be willing to do that, though, as dd then wouldn’t have any math to take in eighth grade. Maybe I should try again with the high schools, but it was pretty discouraging. Dh thinks it will be fine if we send them to school, they learn nothing but get good grades to get into college. But there’s more purpose to the high school years than just having social experiences and getting into college.

We could probably afford to do the heat/air right away, because we’ve been saving up to do the yard, here, and that savings would cover most of it. That and a small repair on the basement steps would make the house comfortably livable. Updating the awkward-but-functional kitchen and other projects would be longer term desires, but not needs.

We haven’t missed the charter deadline. Sign up for the lottery is by March 1st. We could apply as non-residents and then move to transition to free, but the chances of getting in as non-residents is significantly lower, as they give priority to residents. The secondary insurance makes a huge difference, though. About $12k more in medical costs per year, until dh’s career progression puts our kids out of eligibility for our current state insurance anyway. That’s hard to predict when that might happen, but maybe 5 to 8 years.

Aw, crud. It looks like my kids wouldn't qualify for state secondary insurance in the other state. That changes the math considerably.

I think my desperate desire to go back to where we used to live is largely about wanting to return to before the diagnosis. But a local move, no. It still feels like being trapped in cancer land.

Oh, this reminds me that I need to find out about state insurance if we were to move! Our kids have secondary insurance through our state that works well with our private insurance to cover most of ds's medical costs. I haven't yet checked whether the other state's coverage and eligibility are comparable. That could be a deal breaker.

We have been watching the market for quite a while. It's very unlikely that we will find anything over there we can afford that doesn't need work, as dh is not at all interested in downsizing or going with a one bathroom. Housing prices are significantly higher there, though property taxes are about half.

Yes. That's a primary benefit over moving further in towards the big city where ds's medical care is.

No. The charter school would allow us to pay tuition to send her as a non-resident, but the cost is too much for us--especially considering that I think my others would want to go for high school, too, and I will have two or three high schoolers at a time.

Maybe a little, but not a significant change. The kids could walk to the park and library and would hopefully make friends in the new town that could be within walking distance, but our one family of friends would still be about the same distance drive, and the others live just down the street from us and would become a drive.

This wouldn't actually save us driving for all the medical issues. The specialists are in the big city 1.25 hours away.

Yes, it probably would be. I might just be exchanging homeschooling time for house time if we moved and some of the kids went to school.

I hate the area that we live in, but dh's work has been really, really wonderful at making ds7's cancer care manageable. My girls have finally made friends and settled in socially here. I recently figured out that the deepest part of my loathing for this place has more to do with cancer coming to us here than with the things I dislike about this region. Both of the places I would most love to live in are not options. And as much as I detest it, I'm hesitant to move us to somewhere new that I may or may not like better, have the monumental task of moving ds's medical team, have to start over socially for the kids, still wouldn't have family support, and almost certainly wouldn't have as supportive of a work situation. I feel trapped here, but I keep coming back to the conclusion that striking out for somewhere new doesn't make sense for our family. That said, I have been thinking about a local move. Dd13 wants to go to high school, and our schools are terrible. We didn't really consider the schools when buying this house. We were very satisfied homeschooling, but since having to balance it with the medical stuff, it is not so awesome. They are still getting a good education, better than the public schools here, but it is not outstanding and creative and fun. I don't have the time and energy to manage that anymore. There are better public schools just a few miles away, including a small classical charter school that is pretty nearly what I would have designed for my kids. But there's a state border we would have to move across, and even then it's a lottery to try to get in. But if they don't get in the charter school lottery, the public schools are still better than here. Housing is generally much more expensive, but there is a very interesting old house for sale that would be an option. Generally dh and I look for very different things in a home, but we both took an interest in this one. 115 years old and beautiful, in pretty good condition, but we would need to put some work and money into installing heat/air and taking care of a few other things. (It currently is heated with antique radiators, and only little window units for air. 3/4 of the year is either very hot or very cold here, and electricity is expensive.) I'd love to eventually redo the kitchen into a craftsman style that would better fit the historical period of the home. We'd have more space indoors and a yard that is a decent size for the middle of an older neighborhood in town, within walking range of a big park. It would mean giving up the land and my pet goats. I had a lot of plans for our .8 acre here, and learning to make goat cheese. Honestly I would rather not take on the additional debt and go through the hassle of selling and moving unless it meant getting out of this region. But if getting out isn't going to happen, maybe this is the best option.

Is there somewhere in the vicinity of Houston that you might recommend to a person who is really a rural, outdoorsy, small town kind of girl at heart? With my son's diagnosis, we are never going to be able to go back to my #1 pick (6+ hours from a children's hospital). My #2 pick is financially and occupationally out of reach for us. I really don't know where else I would want to go besides those places, but I hate it here. Just looking down a list of top-ranked hospitals in the specialties needed for my son, I am noticing that Houston comes up very high on both, plus has warm weather and a lower cost of living. The humidity would take some getting used to. The major sports, entertainment, and foods sound like someplace my dh would like. I don't suppose Houston has a small-town-feeling suburb with an excellent classical charter school, does it?

I thought it was pretty disappointing when the family got their magic and powers back at the end, instead of having to learn to recognize their self-worth independent of abilities (both their own and everyone else's).

Meyers Creek Or maybe up pistol river, which is right next to it but with a sunnier microclimate if you go just a mile upriver. And I would go stay with family in San Diego from mid-January to mid-March each year.

I think it’s a pretty common experience for bright kids to go through school without much challenge until they eventually reach a high enough level to hit that point of having to work at learning for the first time, and struggling through that experience when a lot hangs on the outcome. I found that point in college. My dh did in law school. That was a tough one, having to learn how to work and persevere at learning while also managing law school. It’s certainly doable, and still produces bright adults who have learned this important lesson, so I don’t know that one can really say that bright kids need to be challenged as children, but I definitely think it is advisable to learn at a younger age before so much hangs in the balance.