Good news!

We won the insurance battle! Turns out that our home state has an Autism Insurance Mandate which kicked in for T's speech and OT - every last session of it from January-April. This is a HUGE-O relief, because by the time we were billed for all those sessions, we owed the hospital over $5,000.00. That is a lot of money. We also got a check for a compounded medicine which they weren't going to cover, but after I called and called and got bounced around to different people each time, each with a different answer (are compounded prescriptions covered? yes or no?), lo and behold, a check for the prescription arrived a few days ago. So what the heck - I'm not earning money right now, but I've just saved us a bunch of it with all my phone calls.

Thing is that no one at the hospital, therapy clinic, or insurance company knew about the state mandate. Our pediatrician didn't know about it. I just happened to hear about it at a meeting I attended several months ago. I forgot about it until about a month ago when I came across the notes I took from that meeting. I bought it up with the insurance company, and suddenly their whole tone with me changed. So here we are, and I'm feeling quite pleased with myself...but also wondering - yet again - about all the families out there that don't know about this. I have this vision...maybe it's my new calling...of having some sort of a guidance service for families with a child newly diagnosed with autism. There is so much information out there, and you are expected to be an expert immediately on every last bit of it...what if there was an organized, easily accessable group/company/organization that could be immediately dispatched to these families to help them navigate all this?

Yeah, I'll do all this in my spare time. Well, who knows?

The other good news is that we are settling into our new house in our new city nicely. T has actually been a real trooper - slept through the night on the very first night and every night since!

I am going nuts though, knowing that we can't start up his Verbal Behavior program until early August due to vacations and other conflicts, and school doesn't start until mid-August. So he spends lots of time just entertaining himself, which usually means rubbing his fingers together and grunting or saying "Uck, uck, uck...", or spinning a toy, or wandering around upstairs, playing with the toilet seats or our ceiling fan. It is a lot of work, unpacking our belongings and finding a new home for everything...and my old friend Motherly Guilt has settled in very well, worrying about all this un-engaged time he has while I'm working on the house. I seem to recall a similar post about this around spring break time, so this is nothing new, but still very real. But we've already installed a cool trampoline in the backyard, and just yesterday purchased a wooden swing/play set for him, which is sturdy and big enough to grow with him as the years go on. I'm looking forward to it being installed in a few days! I mean, I swing back & forth from worrying about all this down time and realizing that it is summer, after all, and every kid deserves some down time. So this will be Mom & T month, which will be good. We're almost done with all the boxes and unpacking, then we can at least go find a playground somewhere nearby.

In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my victory with the insurance company. I also want to go see "Sicko" really soon!