Thursday, March 27, 2008

Frustrated....very frustrated....

A couple of days ago I called Nicks' doctor to see if we could get a referral for a doctor in Portland to treat Nick. This Doctor came highly recommended by another mom and we were starting to get excited about doing some new treatments with Nick. We were going to do some of the biomed stuff. We just wanted to see if Nick would improve. We were not looking for some "miracle cure", but just improvement. Well, his Doctor just called me back this morning saying they would not cover anything like what we were looking for. They will cover the basic therapies like OT,ST, and ABA (which he is getting), but that's it. WE will have to cover anything outside of that. Just an initial visit to this Dr would cost $800. Excuse me while I bang my own head against a wall...

9 comments:

Joeymom said...

You're actually lucky if you have insurance that will cover ABA- here, it's considered "educational." Speech therapy is often also denied without some kind of medical diagnosis to go WITH the autism. Biomed is considered "alternative medicine" and should be considered with MUCH research and care, and some of the "therapies" are actually dangerous. You might instead look into a nutritionist (and try to find one that does allergy diets- so they can help eliminate certain things like casein or gluten), and make sure Nick is getting a good multivitamin every day.

Amy said...

Thank you for pointing out how fortunate we are with the therapies. It is easy to forget that when you are in the "trenches" with the daily struggles. For some reason, this week has been hard; maybe it is because Nick is sick and his behaviors seem worse. I am not totally sold on all the biomed stuff; but dh wanted to try some of it. I will look into a nutritionist-might be cheaper!

Deborah Carr (Debs) said...

That is so expensive, I'm not surprised you feel utterly frustrated.

Jay & Jody said...

Hi, Amy.
Wow, that sounds very frustrating! I'm not sure if you've tried any of the suggestions from the Talk About Curing Autism website, but they have a section on Biomedical treatment on a budget: http://talkaboutcuringautism.org/medical/biomedical-on-a-budget.htm
Good luck!
-Jody

Martha said...

Our insurance will not cover ABA either - but I found someone willing to train me - and then I will start doing it myself. Hope you are able to get some answers.

I am visiting from the Autism blogging role. Nice to meet you.

Blessings,
~Martie

Trish said...

Bummer about the insurance. We are in the same boat and had to pick and choose what we could pursue financially. There is a lot you can do on your own and with some basic testing, if you can get your regular pediatrician to sign the forms (we used Great Plains Lab for this).

I really recommend Dr. Kenneth Bock's book on Healing the New Childhood Epidemics (his website).

Brillig said...

Oh yeah... I TOTALLY understand that banging the head against the wall thing. Sigh. Good luck with that!

Jen said...

If there is anything more frustrating than trying to access services for you child then I don't even want to know about it. It can be so stressful. I'm sorry you're going through a rough patch right now.

Inspiration Alley said...

Reading your post makes me realise how lucky I am to live in Englamd where provided that you can make your case the NHS and the LEAs will fund what is required. Make it sound easy don't I? It's not. It takes years of banging your head against walls fightimg the system and being played for a fool, but with perserverance it's possible to get there even if you have no money.