Not This Year

    We have prayed and prayed and prayed. Some of you have too. We have planned and fought for it but once again the Feeding Intensive is not going to happen this year.  We are two weeks from our start date. I am bewildered, irritated, dejected and crushed. Yet I have peace.

    Here’s what happened. The billing for the center is mostly done as 20 Occupational Therapy visits. In spite of what Chet was told when we bought the plan, the insurance is now saying we only have 35 covered visits. We have 4 left this year and then we have to pay out of pocket. Well the feeding center’s price per visit is extraordinarily higher than a normal one. We could go through with the four week intensive and then fight the insurance to get the money back but that leaves us with the risk of paying it all ourselves. Today we were told the total would be $60,000. Not a typo. Sixty thousand dollars. Yeah. That is too big a risk. Not prudent.

    What do we do now? We will wait until the new year starts and we have 35 visits covered again. Hopefully the insurance will not give us a problem about it and simply cover the majority of it. In the mean time we will start working with his Speech Therapist on getting more comfortable with foods and continue his oral motor exercises, etc.

    All my dreams for a more normal 5^th birthday and the holidays are flushed down the toilet. As I’ve said before his inability to eat a normal meal is the biggest hindrance to leading a typical family life, the hardest thing to deal with. So this is really tough to hear. Especially with us having been so close to finally getting in.

    Like I said at the beginning, though I feel crushed I have peace. I know this is the right choice. It would be pure foolishness to put ourselves that far into debt when a four month wait could leave us with no debt at all. I think God has been preparing me for the news. All week I have been thinking on Philippians 4:6-7. I’ve been reading and reflecting on like passages and just praying about it a lot. Well here we are denied our desires for the moment but I have peace. After all, we have been doing this for four years what’s another four months?!

    Please continue to pray that he has victory in these things as we continue to work with him on it while we wait.