The Unexpected Gift This Teacher Received for His Son With Special Needs

Our son, Andrew, is 8 years old and has mild cerebral palsy. He’s undergone huge improvements with alternative medical treatments, but the insurance industry won’t cover any of the costs. We have to pay an average of $750 per month out of pocket for Andrew’s local treatments and up to $20,000 each summer for his intensive treatments from a specialist out of state.

Andrew’s awesome daddy is a public school teacher who works extremely hard at three teaching-related jobs. One is full-time, the other two are part-time. He does this to provide for our family and to pay for Andrew’s expensive and ongoing medical needs. But as we all know, teachers aren’t paid what they are worth. I had to leave the workforce in order to meet Andrew’s needs and demanding schedule of near-daily doctor and therapy appointments.

We’d been working very hard on various fundraisers for Andrew’s medical treatments for months, but our efforts weren’t providing anywhere near the donations we needed. We still needed to raise more money — and soon.

One Sunday in early May, I posted another plea for donations on local Facebook community pages. I said in the message we still had to raise $9,659 for Andrew’s medical treatments by June 1 in order to provide him treatments this summer without going into serious debt. That week also happened to be Teacher Appreciation Week.

Four days later, this happened: A student came into my husband’s classroom with an envelope. My husband wasn’t this student’s teacher, nor had he taught the student’s sibling. We didn’t know his family. The student said he had a Teacher Appreciation Week card for my husband and a gift from his family. The gift was a check for $9,659, which was exactly what we still needed for Andrew’s summer treatments. We were blown away to say the least.

What this generous mother didn’t realize is that she also gave me extra gift along with her check. I was planning to set up a donation table every Saturday night in May at a local car show. The following weekend was Mother’s Day weekend. I would have spent Mother’s Day eve, as I have the last few years, alone at my donation table, very humbly accepting donations for our son’s summer medical treatments. I would have been away from my son. Thanks to this beautiful gift, I didn’t have to do that. I spent the rest of my Saturdays in May preparing for our summer medical treatment trip with my family. This caring mother also gave me the beautiful gift of time and togetherness with her generous donation.

To the family who gave this gift, I don’t have the words adequate enough to express our profound thanks. Thank you for choosing to see this need and stepping up in the most critical way at exactly the time we needed someone to do so. You— and I believe God’s love through you — have been forever imprinted into our hearts. Thank you!

For more information about Andrew’s medical treatments and journey, please visit Pray for Andrew.

To read a news story about this amazing gift, visit 12 News.

A version of this post originally appeared on Pray for Andrew.

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