Since we began to get the tail end of this year’s calamitous winter storm Wednesday evening, this area’s school district actually announced a closure for the following day on Thursday… which is earlier than they have ever announced closures for anything. This school district has the history of either being the last in the entire area to announce closures or delays, not announcing them at all, or waiting until bus drivers and parents try to get themselves to school (or older students try to drive themselves to school) and things start happening to do something like call off the rest of the day. As a child, I used to sit in front of the television crying as every other school district announced closures or delays well ahead of start time. There were times when I was actually being walked out to the car, crying, and my grandmother would rush to the front door to tell us that our district had finally announced something. Sadly, this actually happened a lot as I was a child.

I go by the local district when it comes to what days we have off although bad weather days do not affect us, although I work with the kids during the summer as well on subjects and topics that they need to put an extra bit of time into. Meanwhile, I continue to know that the district — mainly the superintendent — is incentivized by money just like they were when I was a child. Remember when they continually tried to re-open at the start of the pandemic when all of this was raging? Pepperidge Farm certainly remembers…

As most of you already know, I was put on prednisone because of breathing difficulties. We’ve tried to lower the dose and make it less frequent over the… months and years that it has become increasingly more problematic, but for me it seems like the side effects have drastically been outweighing the good things that it does for me to the tune of reconsidering whether or not prednisone is a viable medication for me to take.

Well, in spite of using mouthwash one to two times a day and brushing twice a day, I managed to get a sudden gum and jaw infection. As it became increasingly more uncomfortable, I began drinking soda and water from straws and sticking to softer foods like chicken noodle soup and ramen (that Bub doesn’t lovingly steal from me because now he loves ramen). Because it came on within a day and a half of starting prednisone once again for something that was very necessary, it was — as it should have been — attributed to prednisone. So now I am on two antibiotics meant to make it go away and fast so that I can resume eating more normally and so the infection doesn’t, well, spread. You know, since I’m immunosuppressed…

At any rate, I also learned something else: that people have read my blog well enough to know that Bub is on Mirtazapine at night to help him sleep (which it does a beautiful job of, by the way, since he was clinically diagnosed with insomnia at age two), and Risperdal during the day to help decrease the violence of meltdowns and to stabilize his mood (and that works really well given where he was at when all of this… escalated to the point that he needed medication, which quite likely could have been kick-started by adolescence). Apparently they have some opinions on this, claiming that I “drug my kid(s)”. And although it’s kind of adorable that they read through my blog well enough to figure out that he’s on two different necessary medications prescribed by his care team, what would they rather me have him do? Be miserable because he can’t sleep? Cry because he can’t sleep? Quickly, and wildly, oscillate between moods and have meltdowns that hurt people? It sure seems fun for people to point fingers about how I supposedly “drug my kid(s)” when these are both medications recommended and prescribed by his care team, consensually taken by him every morning and evening. Sadly, this goes right back to the fact that even in 2022 (which has just barely started and already, people are wilding out for no good reason), people continue to medication shame and pill shame, which does nothing to support those with mental health illnesses… least of all actual kids.

If you’re jealous that Bub is clearly living his best life over here, by all means, just admit to being jealous.