Lucas Camilo

After his last trip to the hospital for an x-ray we let Lucas rest for eight days, not moving him anywhere except from bed to couch to bed.  And the down time seems to have paid off!  Last Friday we finally got him back up in his chair and went in to get another x-ray. The doctor was very pleased with the progress — he even showed Lucas the images, and the healing was visible and obvious. Just as significantly for us, Lucas showed no signs of pain the whole time which was a huge contrast to the previous trip to the hospital. So the doctor gave the go-ahead for a return to kindergarten, at least for partial days.

Over the weekend we took a couple short practice trips out of the house. Getting Lucas in and out of his chair is a two-person job now, and he has to slouch down a little to accommodate the big angle of the splint on his hip. But he doesn’t seem to mind (and we were thrilled to be out with him on these beautiful end-of-summer days!), so we went to the library on Saturday and the park on Sunday. We also dragged Lucas along to look at a home for sale in our neighborhood, and he approved because there were birds on the wall. We didn’t explain that the pictures don’t come with the house.

This morning he made his big return to kindergarten. The most heart-warming part was seeing how Lucas’s presence has grown in his absence.  On the first day of school none of the kids really talked to Lucas.  Today we got to school a little early and stood in the hallway waiting for classmates to come in to the building in the morning. When the doors opened, kids flooded in, saw Lucas, and started shouting “Mr. McCullough, Lucas is back!!” Lucas was pretty quiet and maybe a little overwhelmed, but it was amazing to see kids welcome him back into their class!

So much time on the couch that Lucas has taken up reading the NYT, at least when there’s an article about dinosaurs.