When Jenny takes her medication as prescribed, she can go years seizure free. When she does have them, they are bad...total Grand Mal seizures with no aura first. And if she has one, she will have a second one within 12 hours. Always. Every time. She is extremely dose sensitive - not enough and she'll seize, too much and she'll seize. She gets her meds through the Prescription Assistance Program. They dropped the ball and her refill hasn't come yet. She was scared that she'd run out, so she cut back by one pill to get her through until the new meds got here. Yeah, didn't work so well. And she didn't tell anyone that was what she was doing, so we weren't watching. We've told her before that if that happens, we'll pick up enough at the drug store to get her through, but it ain't cheap.
Yesterday the School Resource officer pulled her driver's license for 3 months, and told her he'd informed the highway patrol, the town cop, and Sheriff Blackburn that she is not to be driving. So now she has Kendra, a job, Katie, Kenny works, and she has no way to get them anywhere. She shouldn't be driving anyway, we've told her before that she is not only responsible for herself if she seized while driving, but for Katie and Kendra and everyone else on the road. But with no public transportation in our area, what are ya gonna do? We'll be gone most of September, October, and November. I did try to arrange for the special ed bus to pick Kendra up and then bring her home, but Katie and Jenny will still have to walk to the high school. Nothing else to do for it. When I went to pick up Kendra yesterday, the school resource officer was standing in front of the parking area of the school watching for Jenny, and then he followed me to the high school to pick up Katie. It was a mess....the principal of the elementary school has hated me since Jamie was in middle school, so she just sat across her desk glaring at me, telling me that I wasn't allowed to pick up Kendra because I wasn't on some "dismissal" list. I'm on the list to be called and to pick her up if she gets sick, but I can't pick her up without Jenny's authorization. Fine, Karmen.....call Jenny. Then she said it was late in the school year and she didn't know how long it might take to arrange a bus for Kendra - if she even could.
I lost it. I told her she WOULD arrange for a bus, or face a violation of the ADA. BY LAW, transportation to public school for kids with disabilities isn't an optional amenity, it's a requirement. And I reminded her that for 3 years Ken and I took Kendra to and from school, often with her highness standing right there in front of the car supervising school dismissal, and that I had done so the day before while she stood there talking to a teacher. All I could get was "I'll see if there's anything I can do." So I'm sitting in the parking lot waiting for Kendra, the resource officer is standing there in front of my car, joined by Karmen and the head of the school special ed services "chatting". Keisha brought Kendra out and when we went to the back of the car to load the wheelchair, she asked me why I was crying. Because I'm so doggone tired and so mad!! When I told her she said, "OH, no. As Kendra's aide, I'm telling you that she has to provide that bus, and right now so there's no interruption in services to Kendra. And she's talking to the man who will tell her so, just watch." I left the elementary school to go get Katie, and when I got the girls home Jenny was on the phone with Karmen. Jen said she was just as nice as she could be, the bus would pick Kendra up first thing in the morning, and Jenny had nothing to worry about.
