"Welcome Back Josie"

Adorable sign made by Audrey Raulli

One round of hugging...lots of that happening today

In her new classroom. They swtched sits right after this and she now sits in the front.

Coloring at recess

Josie returned to school on Monday. She was so excited to be back and see her friends. The girls were so cute. They would talk a bit and then all hug each other and then talk again and hug over and over. Even the boys were running over to welcome her back. We are lucky to have such great kids support her here. I stayed the whole day so we could meet with the appropriate people about her current needs, new developments in her physical ability and her education ability. I was so excited to share how much progress she has made while we were away.

We left school after lunch in order to get to Liz's for her first day back to therapy. Let me back up a bit. On Sunday night she acted like she was coming down with a cold. She was so anxious to get back to school I decided she must be well enough to go and I would be with her if she needed to leave. Ok fast forward to Monday afternoon. We arrived at Liz's and when we walked in the door, Liz came over to hug Josie and talk to her. Josie wasn't responding back, which Liz commented on and is not like her at all!! I noticed in the car as we were pulling in that she had a seizure, which she hasn't been having. Thought nothing of it and kept going. Liz went to the room to get it set up while Josie walked down the hall with one cane. Her steps were so off and I was actually getting mad at her for not walking correctly, especially after her progress in Michigan. As we walked down the hall she had about 4 more seizures in 3 minutes. Odd, but we kept going. At this point I was more concerned about the walking. I put her up on the bed and Liz began to stretch her feet. She began to seize one seizure after the next. When we got to 10 I ran to the car to get my phone to call Dr. Mitchell. The seizures continued and I couldn't get through to neurology. Finally she wasn't responding very fast so Liz and I put her in the car and headed to the local emergency room. As we drove over, I was able to get the resident on call paged. At first he wanted to go over her complete medical history before he went to talk to Dr. Mitchell. I told his with all due respect we would be on the phone for 3 weeks just to cover the history and to please just go get Dr. Mitchell, she has the history. He went and got ahold of Dr. Mitchell. A half hour later, while sitting in the parking lot of Henry Mayo Hospital, the seizures stopped. We decided to drive home...there is always 911 on the way if we needed it. As we were pulling up the resident called back. He thought the onset of the seizures were because of the cold. I always try to keep her away from anyone sick when possible because I knew there was a possibility of the seizures increasing with sickness. Luckily she has never had this happen when she has been sick in the past. The resident thought that the seizures would stop when she got well. He doesn't want her going anywhere until she is completely well because if she gets sicker she will seize more and they could escalate into grand mals. He thought I should keep her home for the week so she can completely heal and not compromise her immune system anymore. Joy, her PE PT, said that all her seizure kids are sick with this cold and are experiencing an increase in their seizures. One of her little guys is in the ICU because of it. Award winning start to school. Calling in sick the second day was extremely embarrassing. I try so hard to make her fit in like a normal child and this definitely doesn't help my cause. Well, doing the best we can. Today she felt so bad the only thing she did was go from the bed to the couch back to bed for a 3 hour nap out to the table for soup at dinner and back to bed. She feels awful. Hopefully tomorrow she will turn the corner. She had a few runs today with cluster seizures. An episode of 6, 10 and 8 in a row. I haven't seen any clusters tonight. I will up the Omega again tonight to help offer more brain support. She seems to do better with this. Wish I had a more positive and cheerful post, but on the bright side, glad not to be in the hospital. Jenny and Josie