Today was day three of the new school year for Amy, a fifth grader now, and it was a helluva day.  The phone rang at 11:20am.  The school secretary was calling to let me know that my daughter was having a seizure and that the office was on the line with 911.

I told her I'd come on over.

Just before making the right turn onto the street her school is on, I saw the hook and ladder coming full code in the opposite direction.  They turned left and I followed them up to the school.  I was pretty calm.  This was, after all, the third time I've followed an emergency vehicle to where my daughter was.

By the time I got to her she was pretty well coming out of it, sitting up against the outside wall of a classroom.  Various school and district personnel were around her, and everything seemed to be handled well.  An ambulance arrived a couple of minutes later and they checked her vitals: bp/pulse, blood sugar, and put her on O₂.

I got to meet the new principal, as well as some other new staff people, and answered questions of four firefighters, a battalion chief, and a couple of paramedics.  In all, there were a dozen people huddling over and around Amy as she sat there coming out of her haze.  Radios crackled and blurted, belts jingled with gear.  This happened just after recess, so classes were in session and the classroom doors were shut, although there were a few rubbernecked teachers who poked their heads out just to see what was up.

I signed a release, thereby taking over as the loco parentis, gathered my daughter's things, and drove her home.  I spent the next few hours updating Viv at work, putting a call in to Amy's neurologist at Children's Hospital, fixing a lunch, and just generally hovering, doing my best to keep my intense scrutiny as surreptitious as possible.

Amy took a forty-five minute nap at around 1:00pm and that seemed to do her a world of good.

I'm the tired one now.

Just last week I revised and updated the standard info sheet we distribute to various school employees, delivering it to the office on the day before classes started.  Prosaically entitled "What To Do If Amy Has A Seizure," it's chock full of handy dandy instructions.  

Seems to have done the job.

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