Change is a comin'

It would figure that literally the day after I nail down my five year plan, something happens that makes said plan seem much less nailed down.

I very erroneously assumed that getting Rejeanne diagnosed would somehow lead to her receiving proper care for a well-established medical condition. Oh, how wrong I was!

It turns out that South Dakota is not so much on the ball with this whole autism thing and they haven't bothered to do anything about funding treatment or laying out best practices for the school districts or anything useful at all!

This leaves me with a few options:

1. Apply for SSI/Medicare and wait til hell freezes over and hope for the best.

2. Put Lee on a diet, change his entire personality, then force him to join the military so we can get Tricare.

3. Find a job with the Feds and hope their insurance is similar to Tricare.

4. Move to a state that has sane coverage and/or better procedures in place, such as our fine socialist neighbor to the northeast, Minnesota.

5. Move to Sioux City, cross fingers and try to piggy-back off of Alisha's blazed trail of services for her son. This would let us still have USD as a schooling option & I'll have no excuse to not go see my old friends and cuddle all the new babies. Services for Rejeanne wouldn't be like MN, but it wouldn't be a junky waiver/lotto system and other kids in that district are getting ABA, so at least they acknowledge it is the only thing to do with empirical evidence supporting its use.

6. Give up on college for eternity and move to NH, the intentional libertarian stronghold in America (Porcupine!), which for some reason still cares enough about human decency to ensure autistic children get medical care. (Dear East Coast, why do you feel $20k+ is an appropriate tuition for a state school? You do realize that most folks think UNH is just as podunk as USD, right?)

7. Become a pimp.

8. Spend a great many months/years trying to convince the Vermillion School District to pony up the funding for 20-30 hours a week of ABA therapy just because it is the right thing to do (oh, and will save them $2 for every dollar they spend in the long run). While we wouldn't have to move (rockin'!!), I'm pretty sure they'd fight me tooth and nail on this one for at least a year. I'm not willing to wait that long, which means I'd have to raise an ungodly stink and call an advocacy attorney and probably sue them in the end. FYI, lawsuits take forever. Rejeanne would be 15 before it was done. (ok, probably 8-9 would be more realistic, but still)

If anyone knows a trick to scare the bejeezuz out of a school district to make them throw money at your every whim, please let me know. I'll also accept tips on getting them to just provide what is proven to work. Obeying my whims is not nearly as necessary as I pretend that it is.

Unfortunately, despite very diligent efforts on my part, it took 1.5 years just to get a diagnosis. At this point, every day she goes without the ABA, the longer she will need it later and the less effective it will be.

Please feel free to weigh in on which of the above options seems the most reasonable to you. While I acknowledge my pimp hand is strong, pimping and pandering is unfortunately against my morals these days so if you vote for #7, it's like voting for Nader.

Also, rich people reading my blog, you don't need that third Maserati. If you have that kind of money laying around, I'd like to suggest that my adorable daughter's ABA is a much better use of your cash. It's only $50 per hour. What a deal, right??!! Probably even cheaper than a Maserati.

Maserati = approx. $120,000
$120,000 in ABA hours = 2400

That would be a year and 8 weeks of therapy. From what I hear, that's about how much she'd need (provided she responds to it at all).

Hello? Rich people? *echoes*

Oh well. You'd think there would be at least ONE rich person who finds this on accident while surfin' the 'net on their jet while googling the price of the new Maserati GranTurismo. What the heck is the point of even tagging these posts with such things if I can't lure in just ONE generous benefactor?? It's because we don't live in Africa, isn't it?

The Sorrows of Being Nine

I thought this day would come in Kindergarten. Crimson is such a gentle, sensitive girl. I figured the kids in Kindergarten would eat her alive and change her forever. I didn't happen. Every year, I keep thinking "It'll happen this year" because I don't believe that sensitivity can make it through the torture of elementary school and I KNOW it can't survive junior high. Crimson is at the tail end of 3rd grade, I'm thinking this is another year that went surprisingly well. But no, it's finally the year that Crimson realizes that kids can be mean and that there isn't much one can do to change that. I feel so bad for her. Her feelings are really hurt. I told her to just avoid them the best she can and if they lay hands on her, beat the daylights out of them or die trying. Crimson, my obedient one, says "Mom, I'm supposed to tell the teacher if that happens. We aren't supposed to hit back." *sigh* Alrighty, I told her to do it that way the first time and if it happens again, wail on them til someone pulls you off and I'll tell the school that they didn't solve the problem the first time with their hippy nonsense so I told her to issue a beat down. She seemed satisfied with this. After talking to her step-mom, I discovered Crimson has been hiding her face and standing there when these kids are berating her, so then I had to get her back on the phone and give her The Lecture. Much like sending a soldier to war, I had to tell her to suck it up and not show weakness to the enemy.

Why is public school like this?? Is it so friggin' hard to just go to class and mind your business? Crimson pretty much does her own thing to the tune of her own drummer. I doubt Crimson even understands when this kid says "you think you're all that" and does everything possible to exclude her and demean her. This year has been so hard on Crimson. She's had to deal with discovering she is not great at everything, that people can be mean, that home life is not what it could be, etc. She all the sudden has started to catch the nuances of life and the faults of those around her, as well as her own. She has no hard exterior because she never knew she needed one. I really wish I could just take care of this stupidity for her, but I can't. I really hope she can learn how to never let them see her pain. It's really the only way to make that sort of thing stop (short of punching them in the face anyways).

I miss my Crimson. People, teach your kids manners. Seriously. Kids don't have to be mean ya know. They can learn to be civil just like anyone else. They just have to learn it AT HOME!! So, ban the snarky cartoons and speak to them kindly as much as you can. Oh, and take the teacher's side whenever there is a problem. Grrrrr!

So sleepy...

I'm sleepy. I'm going to try to coax Lee off of the couch and try to get him to sleep in bed. I think it is funny that he can answer my questions in his sleep. I asked him if he wanted to sleep on the couch or in bed and he says "I want to sleep on the couch but I want to lay down with you". Hrm. That's a mighty narrow couch we have. I think I'm just gonna sleep in bed...

In other news, there may be a possibility that Cyrus' mohawk will be spiked and photographed again tomorrow. I'm kinda excited about that!

We went to a very early Christmas party tonight. Rejeanne looked around more and was generally more engaged, but still stayed on a lap all night. It's still improvement though. Her speech is rapidly improving. She can say "shirt" and "stick" now so she's getting some hard consonants going on. Hopefully there will be more phrases soon.

I have a ton of homework to do tomorrow. I think I better just go to bed now. Oh, wait, it's the last week of school!! Then the week after is just finals and another semester is over. Yay!