Heroes and Heroines!

Hello again, sorry for the delay in updating my blog, it has been quite a month! Lucie had her fourth seizure and then after finally getting some anti-epileptic medication for her, she had a bad reaction to it. Without wishing to sound melodramatic, the odds after all are 50,000-1, but the side effects she got were similar to what the leaflet warned against and what every parent dreads to hear - meningitis. Not the rash and certainly not the horrible later stages thankfully, but she had the fever, headaches, nausea part - and ........ well, after all we've been through of late, it was a scary 24hrs until her symptoms started to ease - phew!  Now we are just waiting to see whether the medication works and whether her blood test results suggest she can keep taking it - it lowers her white cell count apparently. But hopefully she can tolerate the drug and it will work.

Anyway - on a more positive note - a lifetime ambition was achieved as Lucie finally came to see the mighty York City with me. At Wembley of all places. When we told her hospital consultant she was going, he looked at us as though we were mad - an autistic epileptic in a crowd of 40,000? Not medically unsound, but rather a 'brave decision' as they used to say in Yes Minister!

But off we went, staying overnight in Welwyn Garden City. The morning of the game she said she didn't want to attend the match and we almost gave in. But sometimes you have to draw a line in the sand and when we thought about how much our lives have contracted over the years; no holidays abroad, little socialising, even a tailing off of UK holidays, we thought this was something we were going to see through.

When I looked at Lucie going through the turnstiles however, my heart sunk. She looked terrified - what have I subjected my daughter to, I thought? But two minutes later, she was in her comfortable and surprisingly roomy seat, the speaker system was blasting out some of her favourite tunes and from that moment she loved every minute. Especially seeing daddy totally lose it as the final whistle saw York win 2-1 and finally, finally gain promotion back into the football league.

We've learned from this that whilst doing new experiences with our children is not easy, they are worth doing. We now have a memory which will last a lifetime and hey, Lucie wants to 'go to another football match, dad' in August. Bootham Crescent might be a come down from Wembley - but my pride in my team and my daughter will be just as heartfelt. My father took me as a child, now at last, I'm taking my child too. Thanks Lucie for braving it and making dad very proud.