Additional Needs

He’s Broken Another One..

Posted by Carolyn Voisey on 19th May 2023 Additional Needs, Advice & Support, Disabilities

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At his previous school, my son was pretty legendary for his ability to reduce otherwise perfectly normal, intelligent individuals into quivering nervous wrecks. He has the kind of epilepsy that can appear like one of those incredibly violent summer thunderstorms, turning a calm and sunny day into a torrential, chaotic maelstrom in a matter of seconds.

Many is the time we’ve had the dreaded phone call to say he was being blue lighted to hospital and to meet him in resus. Inevitably, by the time we arrived he’ll be lying in bed flirting with nurses and looking perfectly fine if a little pale, but not worse for wear for his ordeal. His teaching staff on the other hand invariably look like he’s ripped their soul from their bodies.

If there is anything that comes close to the terror of watching your child stop breathing during a seizure, it’s having to watch SOMEONE ELSE’S child, who you have responsibility for, stop breathing during a seizure. And these wonderful, caring staff had to experience this with my son on a pretty much daily basis.

Since moving to high school we’ve had a remarkably good run without major incident.

We knew it couldn’t last, sure enough a week ago he decided to throw a cracking seizure  into the mix that school hadn’t seen before; so stunning was this one that no fewer than three ambulances were in attendance plus an air ambulance medic by the time Daddy arrived. The first I knew about this dramatic incident was when I arrived home later that evening to the comment from Daddy of ‘he’s broken another one’ referring to the trauma our child had just inflicted upon his poor teaching assistants!

One positive from this is that in we know our faith in his class staff is well founded. They may have felt utterly wrecked by events, but my boy was happily flirting as per usual within hours of the type of seizure that should by all rights have landed him in hospital thanks to their swift actions. They cared for him as well as if he were their own child, and that means the world to us. We know how lucky he is – both in how well he recovered but also in how outstanding both his schools have been.

My contribution to the day’s events? An attempt was made to fuss my child and to ensure he was ok… this overt display of maternal concern was tolerated for about 30 seconds before I was gently but firmly pushed away. Yeah. He’s fine ?