Today I spoke with the occupational therapist. She is going to see him starting on the 24th. She is going to work on getting him to use his thumbs and crawl correctly on the tile. There are about 1 million hoops to jump through with the insurance before we can see her, so we are waiting until after he has his surgery. Same with Physical Therapy, except it isn't that hard to see her. For some reason the insurance company doesn't deem occupational therapy as important as physical or speech for any child, so it is harder to get clearance. We are assured he will qualify, but we need to get paperwork filled out first. Fun, fun! He will see the physical therapist after the surgery as well. We are so close now, that we are going to wait until after that is completed. I spoke with the speech therapist, but only for a few minutes and I am waiting for her to call back so that we can chat more. He needs that most of all, and she really wanted to see him prior to surgery, but I don't know if that is going to be possible. She is really busy, and I am having a hard time getting her to call me back due to that busy schedule. So we will have to see. If not, she will see him after. Again, not that big of a deal - as long as I can get him a scheduled time and day, then I am set. The therapies will last between 45 minutes to 1 hour, so three hours a week just for therapy. Don't know how we are going to do that, but we will figure it out! I think that the PT and OT will be short lived therapies, and that we won't have to see them very long (hopefully). Speech is another issue. I see that being long term. Our insurance will only cover 39 visits a year, so we will have to see what happens after we get 39 weeks into next year to see where he is. Sigh. Go insurance. There is a Florida law that states that insurance has to cover speech for cleft kids, but I am not sure if that law will override the 39 visits things. We will have to inquire. :)
Anyway, we also set up an eye appointment for him on the 28th to have his one eye looked at. It tends to cross and be "lazy" so I want to see if they think it needs to be corrected or it will fix itself over time. He may have to wear a simple eye patch a few hours a day for a few months to get that eye to strengthen, but that should be it.
And the last appointment we made today was to meet with the general pediatric surgeon for his circumcision. He is going to hate us for sure, but we decided to do it. He has the appointment to meet the surgeon on the 8th of October. I wanted to mess with that in October since that was a free month surgery wise. (Not any more, but you get the point).
so I think he is set! You would never think that one little boy would need a pediatrician, an ENT, a general surgeon, an eye doctor, a craniofacial specialist, an audiologist, a helmet, and three therapies all at the same time. But I know - for those of you who have/had special needs kids - this is not unusual. In our case, these things are major right now, but with time, will slowly disappear until we don't have any appointments at all! He is going to be a new boy before we know it!
As for the girlies in our house, Finley said the word "apple" today! She has about a 20 word vocabulary now. And she calls Arlington "sissy". It is so cute. And Arlington is a genius as always! :) She is loving pre-K and is doing a wonderful job there. I think she will be reading before we know it.
Enjoy some pictures from today.
No comments:
Post a Comment