by Samantha Brehm

Created on: October 27, 2010

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

To Whom It May Concern;

Please excuse Samantha's absence from school today.

Samantha is home sick. We understand your concern with the number of her recent absences, but please understand that her symptoms preclude her ability to participate in class. She is experiencing fatigue, irritability, and frustration, and is still recovering from last week (all week we feared that Samantha was on the brink of a social rebellion).

We have already seen multiple doctors; they all attest that her immune system , though stressed, is nonetheless reasonably healthy. There is a good chance that the issue lies in her school system or even her governmental system. We are planning to talk to a governmental representative as soon as our health insurance approves the specialist referral request. We appreciate the concern, but your school is not equipt to help Samantha's recovery unless there is someone in your faculty willing to discuss the sensitive issues of policy.

To make up for the classes that she has missed, Samantha will continue her studies at home. We are unable to simulate the typical classroom busywork, but she is otherwise doing very well and should be prepared to take the finals and AP exams by December. If you have any classwork you wish to send, I can come pick it up, but please don't go out of your way. We probably have enough homework from the beginning of the term for our historic paper-making day.

Sincerely,
Samantha

Samantha's primary physician says that, although her illness has yet to be determined, she may, for attendance paperwork, be assumed to have Bureaucratocracy.

_________________________

I hope that someone can enjoy my grumpy humor.

This 'sick note' is a freewrite activity from about 12 months after I started homeschooling. It's referring to, and gave me the chance to reflect on, the way I started homeschooling.
I had mononucleosis in ninth grade, and although I lost a lot of class time going to doctor appointments, it wasn't diagnosed until march. For more than a semester, I had been showing up for school late, turning in incomplete assignments, and having trouble keeping up. It was my first year in a new school and a new town, so the sharp contrast between this and my baseline behaviors was ignored. When the unusual strand of mono finally showed up in my blood tests, I was given two months to stay home sick and recover.
At the beginning of tenth grade, I was excited for my new classes, but it didn't take long to fall behind. I would stay up late to finish homework, but eventually I gave up and went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, I dreaded going in without my homework. I was tired because I had only gotten a few hours of sleep. And I felt sick, maybe because I was tired, or maybe because I was dreading my day, or maybe because I was sick. But the symptoms were exactly the same as they had been in ninth grade, and after a few fruitless doctor visits, I knew I couldn't float along like that again. The very start of my homeschooling career is a story for another day, one I will try to write sometime, but basically I said that I'm staying home sick for the next three years, I'll teach myself. And so far, it's been great.

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