Another school rant

Haven't been on here for agers as dealing with a lot of medical problems with either the children or myself but thought I had finally got everything sorted today. Boy was I wrong.

I go and observe my son's class swimming on Thursday afternoons and today I sat and watched my son do 2 lengths struggling to breath expecting either his-self or one of the teachers to step in and assist him. My son is only 9, well will be in 5 days but is very conscious about using his ventolin. So we are still at the assisting stage if he says his chest is hurting and he is struggling to breath. His class teacher had a right go at me for stepping in and assisting him when she said he should of been doing swimming and he didn't need his inhaler.

I was wondering if I am the only parent about who feels if she is observing something and in this case her own child is in distress would you intervene or leave your child. So the way my son was in distress was he couldn't breath to talk, was massaging his own chest for some reason this helps him, was pulling his shoulders up when he breathed in and the bit just under his diaphram was sucking in and his poor little heart which has a murmur in it too was working so hard you could see the bottom of it through the indentation pounding away.

Anyway I spoke with his teacher once we was back at school and there was no children about to hear or see how frustrated I was as she had a right go at me for attending to my son and not allowing him to decide to get out and take his inhaler which wasn't even at pool side it was in his trousers pocket in the changing room which was locked from pool side so we had to walk around. Thankfully I had my inhaler on me so gave him that until we could get to his inhaler.

Back at school she had the guts and nerve to tell me that at 9 he should be able to medicate his-self, decide when to take his medication and be able to notice his signs. I point blank told her that I am almost 29 and when I am in an attack myself I still require assistance when I am at the point where my son was so how on earth does age make a difference. It doesn't.

I then saw the head-teacher in the playground and she know something was wrong and I explained to her and we have a meeting tomorrow. I have explained I don't know how many times that my son's asthma is terrible. He doesn't have text book asthma as he does not wheeze and can go from being able to talk during an attack to being unable to talk in a matter of minutes and more times than not it happens that quickly he doesn't even get the chance to start medicating his-self before he needs help to continue medicating if it is going to be a bad attack

OK Sorry about the rant I needed to get it out in a place where people will understand and know what I mean. Thanks for reading and sorry to be a pain Hope everyone's little ones well not so little ones are all doing well and not having to many issues with there asthma

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soz

soz i sent it to u thru message rather than post

[yaf_user681_15459]

Oooo thats awful!

I can so relate to your plight as my little girl is having no support in school at all. Ive found the staff ignorant to Asthma and indeed they treat all children with Asthma as mild and a 'quick puff of Ventolin and all will be fine'!

Im glad you have a meeting with the head tomorrow. Have you written everything down that you want to say? I quite often find that when I go in I loose my self confidence and then dont get across my point.

Ive been told by my daughters school that they now want a dr's note to specify how, when and why she needs Ventolin!! I was furious by this demand as I felt they were belittling my clout as a parent! However, by doing this, they now have no reason to doubt me or question my instincts!

Have you thought along these lines too? Maybe speak to your surgery?

I definately would have done what you did without fail. You stepped in to help your son in a medical crisis. well done you. Are you going along next Thursday too? I hope the things are in place before the lesson to keep him safe and to let you regain your trust in the school staff.

Let us know how you get on tomorrow.

Good luck

Emily.x

[angievere]

Same happened when my son was 8. I could see from the sideline that he was struggling on Sports Day and rushed over to him with his ventolin after a run. The teacher had a go at me, saying I should have stayed with the other spectators. To be fair, she apologised later, she probably realised she'd slipped up not keeping an eye on him.

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Head Teacher is AMAZING and going to change the schools ASTHMA POLICY

Well I wrote everything down so I didn't forget anything and even the slightest details as I wanted to get across what could of been the end result if I had my little champ. The head was amazing she listened to what happened with out interfering or butting in. She then said ""WOW I never thought this would happen as we changed our asthma policy back in may after you doing your event which was a great thing to do and I for one would love to do it again"" She asked a load of other questions including ways they could improve there asthma policy more. I told her the main 3 things I would add intot he policy are:

1) It is the TEACHERS duty to make sure the medication bags are taken out of the classroom on ALL OUT OF SCHOOL ACTIVITIES, I.E swimming, local walks, day trips, etc

2) When at swimming the medication bag is to be AT POOL SIDE and easy for the children to get access to

and 3)If a parent of a child is a parent helper/swimming observe and they feel there child needed assistance they are to take control as a PARENT KNOWS THERE CHILD'S NEEDS AND HEALTH THE BEST.

All the capitals are the bits I said had to be either done in capital letters or bolded as they are the most important things a member of staff needs to get into the heads and memories

I have also given them yet another copy of his asthma action plan, signs of an attack and the process of dealing with the attack from the first sign.

I then also found out my baby boy has a place for SEPTEMBER I then raised my concerns about him going swimming as I am going to get a doctors note stating that when he goes swimming I am to be either in the pool with him as he has 3 forms of epilepsy so needs 1-1 in the pool 100% of the time. And if this can't happen then he DOES NOT go swimming at all with school for his own safety. And I also have to get a doctors note stating that my daughter needs to get out the pool 5-10 minutes before the rest of the class as I need to shower her down. But the head teacher said she will autorise this without a doctors note but I'm going to cover my back anyway.

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fair play well done u!! we need ppl like u in every skool if only all heads were so eager to make changes, x x x

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I know I am expecting my son's teacher to go crazy when I see her next. I haven't been to school today as my own asthma really bad and I am having to use 10x100mg every 2 hours got to wait until 5:10 this afternoon to see a doctor and I am expecting them to admit me to hospital as I am freezing cold, extremely tired and finding it very hard to walk which is a huge down fall since Friday when my asthma started acting up and I started my next 5 day course of 40mg Pred which ended this morning

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GREAT

well done you!

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It's half term time and the bloody school have lost 2 of my son's inhalers. Both blue inhalers one is for his emergency 5 puffs through a spacer and the other is his dry powder inhaler. The it's going to get worse next week when he goes back as we have hospital this week to get a load of test results back and depending on them he is going to require more medication at school and 6 blood sugar level tests as well while at school. My poor laddo is going to be a pin cushion as his hypoglycemia is getting worse. Oh the joys of kids and the fun we have with schools isn't it good? NOT

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awww neva bloody skool is hopeless and ur poor lad take my hat off to u ur a amazing person mother and repersentative for us all ur gr8 and even though the skools aint always keeping up there end of the agreement without ppl like u we wudnt get ne where with skools ur gr8 all the luck for u and ur boy x x x x

[angievere]

How on earth can a school lose 2 inhalers??? That's just ridiculous. And surely contravenes all health and safety - what if another child has got hold of them?? I just wish school staff would take asthma more seriously.

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I know and things r going to get worse. Ryan now needs to have his brown and blue at school at dinner and then I need to give him it again at 4pm. We can't do double dose treatment twice a day so have to spread it out over the day. And this is the process until further notice which is going to drive the school up the wall as well as having to do his blood sugar levels as well before dinner and before his snacks before both playtimes and after dinner and both playtime snacks and depending on the results in 2 days they may have to start giving other treatment

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I can relate to your post & I really think you dont need this battle with school right now. Have you got copies of all their policies, do they have an asthma one? I really think you should keep talking to them & especially those who will be responsible for giving the meds. Will it be a first aider at the school? I have been sat in so many school meetings where good communication was sadly lacking & I was sometimes to blame too! Get the key people to meet & discuss this openly with them. Take a notepad with your questions & write down their answers. If possible go with someone else as they may pick up on something said that you might miss. You need to look like you mean business but in the nicest possible way. I found out later that the school were not understanding my daughters condtion (it wasn't asthma) but they didn't want to admit it. If it is obvious that they are really struggling then can you look at other schools? I know this is drastic & would be a last resort but your childs health is your top priority here. I am thinking of you & I am a parent governor so if you need anymore help then please pm me. Thinking of you all.

S.Mama

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The news was good and bad from the hospital today

The bad news is that his bone and cell density test came back that they are both the density of a 6-6 and a half year old but he is 9 so he has been referred to another department at the hospital for them to invest more on that. His MRI scan was good but it did show that his front lope is mal-formed which is exactly the same as his baby brothers who has 3 forms of epilepsy so I said the consultant we saw today and will see again in 3 months can leas with my baby son's consultant about the neurologic issue

The good news is that the consultant is not happy with his asthma and has changed his inhalers. He is now on 2x100mg Salbutamol as required and 2x100mg Seretide instead of 2x100mg Becodisks and 1x50mg Serevent twice a day. He also confirmed mine, my husbands and our GP's suspiciosn that his heart murmur is made worse by his asthma being out of control at any time. He is hoping that once we have the asthma controlled and his heart isn't working as hard to get oxegenated blood around his body the murmur will either none-exsistent until the next bad episode which will hopefully be just down to a chest infection or general flare up which will be controlled again just by doubling his inhaler for a short period of time. His cortisole level test showed his levels are low but we do not have to medicate it daily just when he is a cronic infection which requires strong anti-bios, oral steriods and/or hospital treatment, has a major injury i.e road accident, broken bone or has an operation which is brilliant news as we was concerned about medicating with the amount of steriods he alrady takes in on a daily basics through his asthma treatment. And as of today we are start a blood sugar level record for the next month so we have his levels for waking up, before bed and after Physical exercise, ie. swimming, P.E, ect and also when he all of a sudden for no reason goes extremely pale, sleepy and wobbly.

Me and Hubby are going to request a meeting on Monday with the head-teacher, Senco and who ever is the person that keeps the medical records up-to-date as we need to find out what the rules are for them doing his blood sugar levels at school after PE and when he is showing his signs of low sugar levels. They wont have to do his levels after swimming as I go as an observer so I can do them after swimming and take any actions that are required