K Update
Shhh! Don’t say anything out loud but K hasn’t had any prolonged bouts of abdominal pain for about 4 weeks now!
We’ve had periods like this before but nothing this long for about a year or so. He’s back at school full time and is even starting to ask if he can go to the odd after-school club.
On the downside, he still has constant back pain but he’s able to cope with this most of the time without needing any pain medication or his wheelchair. The chair still goes into school with him every day but is left in the medical centre “just in case” as he is still getting sudden spasms of stomach pain that — although brief — can cause him to collapse if he isn’t already sitting down. Thankfully, these spasms aren’t happening daily but they do happen without warning — which can be a little scary if you’ve never dealt with them before. So walking the mile to & from school every day is still out of the question.
But he’s coping really well. He’s using the stairs in school some of the time instead of the special lifts and has even managed to fully participate in some PE lessons — although we had to get him to dial it back a little after he managed to badly strain some muscles during games last week. He still doesn’t appreciate how unfit he is after 2 years of using a wheelchair. For the most part, though, we’re letting him decide what he can — and can’t do — on a day-to-day basis.
The last time he had a prolonged “pain holiday”, it lasted about 10 weeks. Just long enough for us to agree to let him go back to dancing classes again. Then 2 weeks later, it came back with a vengeance. So right now, we’re not assuming anything but it’s so hard not to hope…
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