Diagnosis... Kind of

It is one of the hardest days of your life when someone tells you your child has problems. That your child is not "Normal". But I can honestly tell you that the harder thing is when your child is refused the treatment they need. We took Isaac and Micah to an outpatient OT clinic that specializes in Sensory Processing Disorder cases. I was so excited to get to have this direct service for my children. They saw both children individually and turns out Micah is just mimicking Isaac's behaviors, he doesn't have SPD. Talk about huge relief. Someone could actually tell me with confidence that my second child doesn't suffer the same thing as my oldest child. The tears came in the car while Micah told mommy, "don't be sad". The OT explained that while Isaac does have many symptoms of SPD he has many positive factors helping him out. His intelligence and work ethic being two of many. She felt positive that with treatment he can live a happy and succesful life. (notice I didn't say normal? I hate that word!)

Ok here is the catch. Because SPD is not a medically authorized diagnosis as of yet the treatment for it is called habilitation not rehabilitation. Most Health insurance will not pay for any of these treatments. Lucky our health insurance pays for 8 visits. This therapy is only useful if it is routine, once a week. So we can't stretch this out or be satisfied with just 2 months. His condition is not going to go away in 2 months, it's not going to go away ever. And here is the problem with Health insurance and the Government. They are more concerned with cleaning up the messes they made by not spending the money on the premptive services than on fixing the problem before it becomes huge and unwieldy. I pay lots of money for Health Insurance a year, my husbands company pays lots of money as well. This should be a non-issue, we pay, they pay. These therapy sessions cost $125 an hour. That's between 500 and 600 dollars a month. Do you have that kind of money? I sure don't. But that is what it takes to get the help my son needs. So what does a mother do? Do I take the 2 months and say thank you for trying but we can't afford to help our son be successful anymore? Do I try to find the money somewhere? Do I hope that what I am trying to do at home will be enough?

There are plenty of other mother's out there with the same dilehma as I have. And in this case one mother I know has a worse situation than I could ever imagine. I am putting her post HERE because even if my situation is much less horrifying I understand the useless feeling she descibes and honestly it needs to be stopped. We need to have options to help our children succeed and be safe. What use are we if we can't accomplish that?