Quick blog. We've been told today that Alex has a place at the specialist school we wanted for him. Yippee!

Very slow day in work today.

Waiting for things to move on in the project I'm working on, but not much will happen now until tomorrow at the earliest.

Alex's statement review will go to the special needs panel on Thursday, so we're hoping for good news from that - hopefully they'll agree that he needs to move out of mainstream. That should give us the decision we need to get him into the school we want for next year. Deb has been speakin to the local authority staff, and we're hopeful. But you can never count your chickens until it's all done and dusted. Did I just mix my metaphors? I'll probably Twitter the result first - if only to encourage anyone reading to follow me on Twitter. I'm not sure I understand the whole Twitter thing as yet, but I'm trying. It might help if I had some friends :-(

You can now follow me on Twitter as @4harrisons.

Well narked with Virgin at the moment. They're my ISP - although potentially not for very much longer. I've been offline now for just over 2 weeks.

What seems to have happened is that they've upgraded the connection at the exchange to ADSL2. Now I can't access the internet. The router can't see the ADSL signal on the line. 4 calls now to Virgin and I'm no further forward. Each time I go through the same rigmarole, and they report it to an engineer. And it doesn't get fixed. It seems that the relevant work is contracted to Cable & Wireless, and they seem to think everything is working fine.

Well it isn't.

If they don't get it sorted soon, then I'll be looking for another ISP - particularly as Virgin weren't that good really anyway.

This was posted from my Palm using my 'phone as a dial up modem over Bluetooth. I'm suffering serious withdrawal symptoms without internet access!

On a different note, today I donated Platelets for the first time. I need to make a longer post about that another time. Giving blood is something I'm very committed too, but the process of giving platelets took a long time and was quite painful. This is going to take a bit of getting used to.

Deb is at the hospital today seeing another consultant about the lump in her neck. She was told by the last one that see needed it removed through a procedure called a 'parotidectomy' which is quite an involved operation.

Deb was expecting her appointment in March, but this has been pulled forward at the last minute. We're not quite sure why, so I'm a bit nervous about what the outcome will be - although we're assuming that the hospital are just filling a cancellation.

It was half term last week, and I had a couple of days off. Still suffering with the head cold we've all had over the last week or so. Feeling very sinus-y and with a perpetually running nose. Back in work, and struggling to make sense of the project stuff I'm trying to fit around all my other jobs.

Great walk last Monday. Trying to follow a 5 mile circular route around the Cheshire plain, we managed to miss a turn and ended up completely off the route. Luckily, we'd taken the Ordnance Survey map with us and were able to work out a route back. It was very muddy though.

And another great walk yesterday - something we've been meaning to do for a while to the 'dungeon', a waterfall in a steep little valley just off the Wirral Way. Easy walking (good surfaces) and a cafe at the end for lunch. We made about a 3 mile circular route of it. Kids found it easy going (once we persuaded them to go) and we were done before lunch.

Kids back at school today and really cranky with it.

Challenges for March - Alex's statement review on the 9th.; I'm starting as a platelet donor on the 3rd.

Exhausted at the moment. We're trying Alex on another drug called Concerta instead of his normal Ritalin, and he's not reacting to it so well. He's struggling to sleep, and has been awake early all this week.

Neither Deb nor I like keeping him on the tablets he's been taking. The dose is quite high, and we're constantly worried about the short and long term effects. So Deb talked to the paediatrician about alternatives and this is what we ended up with.

I'm nervous about trying this after our experience with Stratera, and I'm aware of Concerta's reputation. But if we want things to change, we have to be willing to try new things - always a struggle where Alex is concerned,

Anyway, early feedback is not good. He's very jumpy and over-active all the time, it seems not to do too good a job at controlling his hyperactivity - which is the point of the exercise. School seem to think he's finding it harder to focus. And to cap it all his sleeping pattern is going to pot.

Sleeping is always something we've had to regulate for Alex. He has never really settled into a pattern by himself. Anything which disrupts this always has a strong impact on the rest of the family too. We're still using Melatonin to help, but Concerta seems to be reducing it's effectiveness.

So I guess he'll be back on Equasym shortly. Just in time for his statement review, which is on Monday. I'll post more about that another day. Too tired at the moment.

Snow!

Only a light dusting so far, but the kids couldn't wait to go out in it. Jessica was up and out of the door by 8:00, which is completely unheard of. Alex slightly more sanguine, he runs to a routine so wasn't about to do something spontaneous. That said, I've no doubt that he'll have been excited once he got outside.

Only a light dusting so far, so nothing to get too excited about. Forecast is for more tonight, so we'll see how we go.

Fwd: FW: Fireman Alex

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: peter.piggybox@virgin.net <peter.piggybox@virgin.net>
Date: 2009/1/31
Subject: FW: Fireman Alex
To: four.harrisons@googlemail.com

Interesting article in today's Guardian by Patrick Wintour on Brown.