PURPLE CANARY

Bizarre symptoms and debilitating neurological attacks that happened only at school upended eleven year old Jill&rsquo,s world. Skeptical medical specialists attributed the odd, recurrent symptoms to the adoptee&rsquo,s biological inheritance then to a mental illness. Disbelieving school officials labeled her an attention-seeking faker. Jill and her mother Joyce insisted the symptoms had a physical base. Medical experts were shocked when DNA testing proved that the mutant gene associated with a &ldquo,rare,&rdquo, genetic metabolic/enzyme disorder was harbored in Jill&rsquo,s liver. Acute Intermittent Porphyria is seldom identifi ed in U.S. adults, never mind children. Through it all, Joyce was on the hunt for a connection between the school and the relentless symptom and temporary treatment merry-go-round. Finally, she found it. Jill was ultrasensitive to chemical fumes that permeated the local school buildings. She was literally allergic to school&mdash,a &ldquo,purple canary&rdquo, harbinger of an inherent danger in today&rsquo,s chemical-laden education facilities. Purple Canary is more than a tale of a girl and her mother struggling for answers. It&rsquo,s a story of mother&rsquo,s intuition, medical misdiagnoses, special education categories, contemporary school bullying, a school chemical toxicity/illness connection, questionable academic and medical ethics and the simple truth that we all fear what we don&rsquo,t understand._,