Zoralei got some kind of bug with nausea and a sore throat the past two days and ended up missing school. Since she was home, she was trying to do some of the makeup homework that she missed from being hospitalized. The more time that has passed, the harder it has been to get the work done. Progressively, there was a little more whining - just general kind of complaining comments, particularly about schoolwork and time management. She has said nothing about the pain, simply one comment that she is so stressed out that she is worried the pain will come back worse. Yesterday, though she was only doing reading, there were a lot of tears. She kept saying how overwhelming it all was. The fact that she has now missed two more days will not make the rest of this week easier. She told me that she is struggling to find motivation and wants to avoid it, because it feels so overwhelming. Much like starting the outpatient RND program. She was counseled to do 2 to 5 hours of exercise (Insanity workout type) a day, but she could not find the motivation to do that much. It was such a daunting task. It is the same with coming home.
In the hospital, they do have schoolwork, but realistically they budget a half hour to an hour in the schedule to go to the school room. Zoralei was expected to do it in the evenings, but she was tired, hurting, and overwhelmed emotionally with the program and often rather find solace in being with people than doing schoolwork. So generally, the only work done was what she found time to do during the hospital's scheduled homework time slot. It would be good if they made that at least two hours. She would not have been nearly as far behind in 6 classes as she was when she got out of the homework,including some that are honors and thus involve a lot of work. It would have made this second and third week easier.
We decided to offer driver's education as an incentive to get the makeup work done. We really feel like if that is out of the way then she concentrate at the at home program and let some of the stress go. Today she managed to do a lot of makeup work without any more tears. It helped to have something she has wanted to do for a while as an incentive. I was impressed with two and a half weeks home, we have only had one spell involving tears over all the makeup work. Still, trying to adjust to an at home workout program and desensitization as well as do 3 weeks of makeup work for school is a lot. It is like she is forced to keep making choices between good things: homework or at home program or sleep? None of them seem like really good things to have to sacrifice. Talk about impossible to avoid stress. . . I suspect it is part of the reason she got sick.
As she cried, she was able to express some pent up emotion about being overwhelmed with the work load, about not feeling a 100% and yet still having so much to do, about wanting to avoid the makeup work and wishing her teachers would understand that there is other classes she has work to do in and to stop pressuring her to get their work in, and about feeling worried and guilty about not getting her at home exercise in sometimes. There is a lot of emotion about her condition and her state and does not include anything about her father's health issues either. There was just the emotions about her own stress. Zoralei has not talked about any of these emotions until she broke down and became ill. I think it was a good release as she seemed to handle it better afterwards, but I would still like to get to the point where we don't have to breakdown to express those emotions.
I know that another two days sick and unable to do her at home exercise program will not make it harder for her to get back into it. She is already finding that a struggle. I still believe they released her a week early. She had just gotten to the point, she was enjoying pushing herself in exercise and then they sent her home to do it on her own and I think the brief glimpse of desire was not quite enough to establish a habit. Though I am glad she did not have another week of makeup work.
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