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(En inglés)

Head Start Heals: Helping Hands

Kimberly Cook: My name is Kim, and right now, I'm living in Boston with my three sons and my husband, ages 6, 5, and 2. When I was pregnant with my last child – and it was a very high-risk pregnancy – he was born premature. He was seven weeks early. He did have a slightly compromised immune system. He started Head Start at about 3 months old. Just before his first birthday, he got sick. So, at that point, I was like, “We've got to get him to the hospital. Something's not right.” When I got to the hospital and I went to pick him up out of the carriage, he screamed like his whole body was hurting.

They had him on heart monitors, IVs, and a feeding tube. And the doctors were saying the terms, “We could lose him.” [Monitor beeping] Head Start had reached out, and they said to me – they're like, "What do you need? What can we do to help you?" And they were coming to the hospital, they were giving me gift cards. They were doing food delivery to my husband, who was home with the other two boys. At one point, two of the staff from the central office came, and so, they took me out to dinner just so that I could have time away from all the tubes and the diagnosis and all the stress. I got out of the hospital with my son actually two days before Thanksgiving. [Siren]

When my son was so sick and he was in the hospital, literally on his deathbed fighting for his life, Head Start took everything they could off my plate. So, that allowed me to completely focus on my son to make sure that he could heal, and I could do what I needed to do for him. They really take the family's hand, not just the child's hand, and they lead them through.

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