School Time

Carly reached a new milestone this week, as she started pre-school on Monday. Over the past few months we have been working on getting her placed at one of the special eduction pre-school programs in San Francisco and a few weeks back we learned that she would be placed at Grattan which is just a short 5 block walk from our house. She was outfitted with a wheelchair and will have a lot of special devices at the school to help her stay involved with the other kids in the class. Her class is all special needs kids, and the school also has typical kids, and we are hoping the extra stimulation from all of the kids will help Carly begin to stay awake longer and accelerate her development.

One little boy has already taken a liking to her, and he pushes her out to the playground and even gave her a little peck on the cheek on Tuesday. Carly will need to have her own teacher assistant assigned to her and this will be provided by the state. While they are working on hiring someone for that position, Christa is filling that role and stays with Carly for the four hour school day. They expect to have someone hired in the next few weeks and then Christa will be able to have a little time to herself during the school day.

Carly’s seizures remain under control since we started the most recent medication and she hasn't had a seizure since January 10. After over four months of seizures it is a great blessing that she isn’t needing to go through that now. Once she completed the taper off of the last seizure medication she has started to be more awake and is eating better. There does seem to be something that is bothering her that looks a little bit like a failing shunt at times, but we really have no idea what the problem might be. At this point we are taking a wait and see approach, and hopefully over the coming weeks these symptoms will start to fade. I will be sure to keep the school pictures coming.

Love, Brad

(I wrote this last night, but didn't get around to posting it. During the night Carly's symptoms that look like a failing shunt got more severe so we are pretty certain that she will need to have that replaced in the next few days.  I will keep you all posted.)