Casey Fero - Addendum - by Pat Fero
 

Addendum:

September 11, 2005

Casey did not want me to continue the diary. The neuropsychologist said to back off and so I did. Overall, 9th grade was awful for him. I remember him not coming home from school once. We waited for hours and it scared me so. He called from a movie theatre about 5 miles away. He’d walked there…his long walk. I picked him up and he told me he just needed to walk.  Forest Gump.

I did get an attendance print out from second semester of 10^th grade.  From 01/20/98 to 5/27/98, Casey missed 23 of 59 school days.  Casey said he was not gone that much and that I was making it worse. We began to argue. He was tense and I was tense and we were both sick all the time. I remember clearly the school conferences, the lost work. I didn’t know what to do - ever. He would do worksheets, lose them, redo and lose them again. He carried his locker on his back because he never mastered a locker combination and with so little time between classes, he could never figure out what he needed and did not need, He had everything with him and most days, never enough.

October 15, 2005.

One might wonder if Casey got better in the summer. He did. He slept late and had very little to do other than baseball which he liked. I did not record wellness or illness in summer. I remember that keeping this diary was worse every year because I felt alone waving the red flag. Finally, I stopped.  I continued to help him learn to write because I knew that he would only make it through high school if he could write well. He learned and did very well with going on and on about very little which seemed to please teachers interested in format and length.  However, his quiet thoughts showed gifts…..more.