Homeschooling with Chronic Pain

While I was pregnant with our fifth child, I knew something was terribly wrong, but the doctors ignored me. They brushed it off, saying this was my fifth child in less than seven years and that I must just be tired of being pregnant. My husband and I believe children are a blessing from the Lord and I welcomed another baby. I was not tired of being pregnant and I knew something was wrong with my body. The labor and delivery were different from every other child I’d had and then immediately afterwards my blood pressure plummeted. Within a couple of days, I had developed a fever of 105.9 and I was deathly ill. My problems had just begun.Over the next few weeks, I went from bad to worse. The doctors discovered that the pain and pressure I had felt in my abdomen while I was pregnant with Hannah was in fact a mass of blood clots around my right ovarian and renal veins. The standard treatment is IV Heparin, but unfortunately I am incredibly allergic to this drug. Instead of dissolving my clots, it created a hyper-clot situation in my body and within another week, my blood was so thick that they couldn’t get the samples to the lab from my body before they were too thick to test. My doctors gave me a 30% chance of living and even if I lived, the outlook for my full recovery was grim.

That was five years ago this April. After two months in the hospital, six weeks of chemotherapy, and many doctor and hospital visits, I am still alive, but I do have permanent complications. Because of the clots in my abdomen and legs, decreased blood flow damaged nerve and muscle tissue. It took me months to be able to walk normally again without a walker and to this day I experience great pain in my legs and feet. The medicine I take makes me sleepy and irritable, but without it, I could not go on. I am a Christian and I know the Lord will not give me more than I can bear, but sometimes He provides medicine to help us bear things. I discovered this after days of being on my knees begging the Lord to heal me, but refusing to take the pain medicine that had been prescribed. Finally, one day I knew that I was going to hurt myself if I did not have pain relief and from that day forward I’ve tried to keep the pain at a manageable level.

I don’t get as much done as I did before I was sick, but I do live differently. I hug my children every day - many times. We say, “I love you” frequently in our house. I don’t stress as much over a messy house or children who don’t know all the answers to their “schoolwork.” I would not choose this path for us, but my children are kind, loving, and respectful. When I feel bad, they sometimes sit with me. When I need water, they fetch it. When I’m irritable, they are patient with me. We don’t go to bed angry or upset because we know there may not be a tomorrow to say “I’m sorry.”

So if there is one thing I could share with other homeschooling moms who deal with issues of chronic pain or chronic illness, I would say to keep your focus on eternity while enjoying every moment of today. I believe being sick has made me more acutely aware of the limited time I have with my children. I am so thankful for this. I am also thankful that while I love my children, I trust the Lord to decide what happens to me because He loves my children even more than I do. Don’t give up teaching your children at home because you are sick or feel that you’re aren’t doing such a great job. Your children may be learning math, writing, and history at a slower pace right now, but they quite possibly are learning about patience, faith, sacrifice, love, and forgiveness. These things will have eternal value!

Sonya
www.sonyahaskins.com