We went to back to school night for Edda tonight. It was very nice to spend some time with Edda’s teacher and talk about what we wanted to work on this year and she’s been very receptive to our ideas. It’s a good mix of inclusion and self-contained classroom – I was a little hesitant to go either way full time just because both have benefits and drawbacks and really, I want Edda to lead the way to show me what she likes and what she dislikes. (Well, I know she dislikes art!) I hope to be able to participate a little more at Edda’s school this year – we’ll see how that goes and if work will cooperate.
Edda had a little “episode” last night. I hate to call it a seizure, because I don’t think that is what it is, but we haven’t seen it in a long, long time. This one was pretty long – about 10 minutes, her eyes were dilated and she was shivering a little and quite rigid. I tried to take a picture of her dialated eyes, but it’s hard when you have dark brown eyes to see the pupil. (I thought I didn’t have pupils until I was in 6th grade because my brown eyes are even darker than Edda’s.)
The kids are eligible to get free seasonal (not swine) flu shots at school this year. I looked at the form and it asked “does your child have any significant chronic or long term illnesses involving kidneys, heart, lungs, nervous system, brain or blood system”. I never know how to answer this question – I think Edda is a perfect candidate for a flu shot (we’ve gotten one every year and since she sticks her hand in her mouth every 2 seconds, she is quite the disease vector) and I don’t generally consider Edda to have an “illness”, rather I think of Rett Syndrome as a “state of being”, but it’s true she has a chronic condition involving her brain – so I guess the obvious answer is YES. But then I think she’s disqualified from getting the flu shot at school. Oh well. We’ll see how that goes too…