Congratulations, Koby!

Edgewood Eagles Class of 2009

My second oldest son, Koby Dylan graduated from Edgewood last night. The ceremony was held in the auditorium at Highland Park High School.

Koby's older brother will be a senior here this year, and Koby will be a freshman.



He had a very rough start transitioning from three years of homeschooling to junior high.

At the beginning of his fifth grade year, he had extensive absences due to his suppressed immune system, and other side effects of the kidney disease. The next 2 1/2 years were spent being isolated from just about everyone per doctor's orders because of the fact that he was in End Stage Renal Failure, and then again for quite a while after his kidney transplant.

Because of the immunosuppression, his body could not fight off infection well prior to because of the disease itself, and post-transplant, while he was on high doses of prednisone. This little guy had chicken pox as an infant, but this was the first of many battles to come.

Due to the combination of his weaken immune system, and the fact that students in his school entering kindergarten had to receive the live, attenuated vaccine against chicken pox (aka: the herpes zoster virus), Koby would come down with a painful case Shingles every September throughout his elementary career.

The kindergarten children entering school were still shedding this live virus after being innoculated. Most people are not affected by this. Koby, however, with his weakened immune system would pick up everything, and I mean everything. Not only that, he would get whatever was going around 100 times worse than everyone else.

One year prior to the his transplant, I had to homeschool all four of my boys to keep Koby from getting sick. We were on isolation status for the year. That was fun! NOT!

The sacrifice paid off, though. While in End Stage Renal Failure, the simple common cold would have accelerated his loss of kidney function. This would have meant hemodialysis for Koby 3-4 times per week, until a match came up for him, either on the national registery or through the live donor testing we were undergoing at that time.

We knew we had very little time before a transplant was in order, and so did everything we could to keep him stable until a match was found.

Anyhow, this is why we homeschool, and why his graduation last night means so very much to us all. Man! Can I explain things to death, or what?!?

From this point on, I will only write captions for the photos. lol

Koby dressed to the nine in the front yard, prior to the graduation ceremony.

Koby with my oldest son, Brandon.

Yes, my oldest son has a mohawk. He wanted to express himself and be unique. He's a very good kid, though, so I really didn't mind.

The ear piercing about two months afterward, though? OMG!!!! I sooo didn't want him to do that.

What the hey! We have to pick our battles, right?

BONUS: Now, I'm the 'Cool' Mom!

So, this our view from the cheap seats in the back. Koby is one the right side, second row, and first on the left. We could not see him, however, because he was sitting directly behind the tallest kid in the class. LOL

BTW, my camera sucks!

Koby and Brandon hangin' out with
some friends, after the ceremony

Koby figured he'd better start practicing
being a freshman in high school, now.

Striking a pose in front of Brandon's girlfriends' artwork

displayed on the wall.







Congratulations,
Mr. Big Stuff!

Only four more
years to go
until you start
supporting ME!