Magnus had infantile spasms (a type of
seizure) from the ages of 2 to 4 months old,
and when the initial treatments failed, he had
brain surgery as a baby. The surgery stopped
the seizures and restored some functioning,
but the seizures came back around the time
he turned 1. Hoping to avoid another surgery,
a process which Alecia described as “horrible”
to see her baby go through, the family turned
to a functional nutritionist.
“He was blind at one point,” Alecia said.
Doctors told them Magnus would probably
never see, walk, or talk. They worked with
the nutritionist to conduct some medical tests
and were able to find a diet that, in her words,
“turned him around.” The seizures stopped,
his mood improved, and they were able to
avoid another brain surgery. Magnus can
walk, talk, and see. And he is now completing
1st grade.
“We do have an amazing speech therapist,
but my husband and I have taken on this
responsibility of helping this child,” Alecia
said. “He’s on grade level right now, and I
want to keep him there. And that requires me
to get the data from this testing service.”
“I’m just so grateful for all the people who
donated to that fund, so I could do that again
for all my kids,” she added.
A calm environment is critical to keeping
Magnus’s brain functioning well, but this
obviously became exponentially more difficult
in the midst of Helene.
Alecia and her husband weren’t too worried
the morning of the storm, until the power
went out around 8 a.m. and their phones
stopped working. They’d lost power before,
but not cell signal. Then they began to get
ominous updates from their neighbors, and
they heard helicopters flying overhead. No
one knew much, but it was clear something
very serious was happening.
Since they had no way of knowing when
the power would come back on, she and her
husband packed up their kids and headed for
Tennessee. “I was scared at that point,” she
said. They had limited supplies and relied
on particular foods for Magnus that were
now unavailable. Justin also needed medical
attention for an infection in his foot.
“We’ll just go stay up in Tennessee, where
it’s safe,” she thought.
They made it to the freeway, but were
forced to turn around at the Tennessee border
because the flood water had severed the road
in front of them. Since gas was scarce, they
decided to head home.
After they got home, they tried their radio
and found a broadcast from a local station.
“We finally got updates, and it was hard to
hear,” she said. “The sheriff was on there
saying this was absolutely biblical.” They
started to worry about their friends. “It was
really scary, because you just imagine
the worst.”
At this point they hunkered down for a
few days and tried to remain calm. Their
neighbors, who they hardly knew prior to the storm, became a lifeline. “I look at
my neighbors so differently now,” Alecia
said. “They’re the people that can get you
information, share food with you.”
About five days after the storm, they made
another attempt to evacuate somewhere with
stable food supplies and medical resources
for Justin. This time they made it to an Airbnb
in Charlotte.
“We were watching active rescue right there
on the side of the freeway,” she said. “It was
incredible to see and just understand what so
many of our neighbors had been through.”
Alecia recalled seeing this sign on the way to Charlotte.
They were shocked to see all the food when
they visited a grocery store in Charlotte.
The lady in front of them at the checkout
overheard them talking about it and paid for
all of their items. But Alecia still felt unsafe.
“I would still wake up in a panic,” she said.
“What if the power goes out here? What if I
can’t get to the store? What if I can’t get my
children what they need? It’s really hard to be
able to calm that terror of not being able to
care for your family.”
They returned home after about a week.
The power was back on, but previously
mundane tasks, such as grocery shopping,
were a challenge. Her kids were finding their
own ways of coping with the uncertainty,
whether through making bracelets, playing
games, or finding ways to help around the
house. For Alecia’s part, she did a lot of
house cleaning.
When their homeschool co-op met for the
first time following the storm, the moms
“hugged and cried and took care of each
other,” Alecia said. But as they watched their
kids just simply play together, they were in
awe. “That was beautiful.”
“We came to homeschooling after some
unfortunate experiences with public school
that were kind of emotionally damaging to all
of us,” she said. “We’ve been homeschooling
for eight years, and it’s been really wonderful.”
While some parts of life returned to
“normal” in about four or five weeks, Alecia
continued to struggle with the reality of what
she experienced, as well as mixed feelings about returning to work. She and her
husband were blessed in that both of their
companies were spared, but she felt like they
should be out volunteering with seemingly
everyone else.
Wreckage in a nearby town.
“I decided to put myself and my friends at
work on the team of getting back to normal,
and that’s something a community needs,”
she said. “It’s hard to separate myself from the
tragedy and the unfairness of that, but I’m on
the team of getting back to normal.”
For months after the storm, however,
something as simple as a rainy day made
going to work difficult and hazardous. Smaller
landslides continued to happen, people got
nails in their tires, and the roads flooded.
“It’s just scary every time it rains,” she said.
“Like, how unstable is the ground? And are we
going to have more landslides? Is it going to
disrupt our ability to go to work or co-op?”
Despite the ongoing struggles, Alecia said
it’s a high point for her every time she drives
by a donation site or receives a small gift in
the mail from strangers wanting to help. “It’s
so nice to be remembered, and it’s so helpful
to erase that trauma of being forgotten and
feeling forgotten,” she said.
She also reiterated her appreciation to the
donors who made it possible for HSLDA to
award her family a Compassion Grant. “It’s
just so healing that people would actually be
willing to help homeschoolers, because in so
many ways, I feel like we’re on our own with
Magnus’s recovery.”
She said some days she has considered
putting him back in school. “Maybe I can’t do
enough,” she said. “But to have a little support
like that grant, it’s incredibly encouraging.”
“It’s amazing, it’s relieving, it’s hopeful,”
she added. “To find hope—that’s just what we
needed. Thank you so much.”
