IEP 2013

After a string of some pretty fantastic celebrations (the Heart Walk, Rudy’s 5th Birthday, the Rescue Mission’s big annual fundraising event, La Patera Fall Carnival),  last week was filled with some pretty important fall “to dos” in Rudy’s annual calendar including his IEP (Individual Education Plan) meeting.  My first impression when I walked into the room of teachers and specialists was “Wow!  Small crowd!”.  Ha  Rudy’s last two annual IEP’s involved both the county AND district personnel and the room had easily 18+ people in attendance…now that Rudy is solely at GUSD, we had a more intimate discussion with 8 including his classroom teachers, his classroom nurse, the district nurse, speech therapist, adaptive PE teacher and psychologist.  As always, there was much to discuss as we reviewed last year’s goals and heard the proposed goals for next year.  We are encouraged by the progress Rudy has made and as much as we value all that the county program offered Rudy, it’s so nice to have him closer to home and settling into his own neighborhood school district.  And, once again, Rolf and I walked away humbled by the number of quality individuals investing in Rudy’s education so significantly.  We are so grateful!  There wasn’t any talk of adding time at La Patera Elementary as part of a “blended schedule” for Rudy but this is still on the table and details for that arrangement will be ironed out in the coming weeks…which is fine because our focus is now on getting Rudy past this week’s surgery.

Rudy has his stoma closure surgery tomorrow.  ULCA just called and Rudy’s procedure is scheduled for 7:30am which means we have to report to registration at 5:30am (which means we’ll be leaving SB at 4am – FUN).  It’s a minor surgery for Rudy but because Dr. Nina and her fellows/residents need to cut around the stoma, remove scar tissue and then stitch him up from the inside out, it’ll be a minimum of 2 hours in the OR and will require an overnight (possibly 2 nights) for observation.  I’m praying he tolerates it all well, of course, and is protected from infection as he heals.  It’s been so long since he’s had a surgery involving an incision that I kind of forgot about all the pre-op stuff we’ve had to do this past week (blood draws, DCing aspirin for 10 days before surgery, dr. appts, etc) and all the post-op wound care we’ll have to be on top off to keep him infection-free.  I LOVE that it’s been long enough to forget details like that but I don’t like that  it has made for a mad scramble this past week!!  Ha Ha  Thank you for your prayers!  I’ll post an update after tomorrow’s procedure.  Thank you – thank you!