After two years of doing a 3-4 hour round trip trek to visit my daughter's dad in prison--and then 2 months of Meltdown City when he was temporarily moved to a place that can't accommodate special needs kids--I finally raised enough hell to get him moved 10 minutes away, to a prison with a nice playroom for kids.
Well, that lasted 2 weeks before all that luxury--and my daughter's happiness--was yanked away and he was arbitrarily moved someplace even farther than the first one, and up in the mountains, and no playroom there...
As if that weren't set back enough....we just got approved for SSI benefits. Good news you think, right? Wrong. I just found out it means my daughter's medical is ending, and she's being moved to some sort of crack clinic insurance. So these great doctors we've had, whom I've been on a great email basis with (can email them anytime with any crazy question and they respond right away!) are all going bye bye for us. And all the speech, OT, and psych appts we had coming up, and all the therapies we had lined up to cover us during summer vacation--all gone. If I would have known this would happen I never would have applied for SSI! Good doctors are so hard to find! And we have been on waiting lists to get services going for summer!
This would be VERY upsetting, if I hadn't already just now finally clawed us back into this same medical network after getting bumped out already once this year after a previous change in benefits thanks to the guv'. After hours on the phone between the guv' and Kaiser membership services, pacing and pulling out my hair, I had finally just gotten it all ironed out and we had just settled in once again. So this makes it EXTRA VERY upsetting!
I have said before that dealing with social services really is like an MC Escher painting: I went in this morning to find out more about these weird conflicting letters I've been getting. (One says we are no longer eligible for medical, and the next says we are getting medical, and both came in the same envelope! Even though we're already getting medical and I just wanted to make sure it wouldn't change!) And was promptly told that no one there can talk to me about medical. Okay...so how do I speak with anyone, since there is no way to get through to the welfare office on the phone? I was given a "special" number to call the state capitol Medicaid office. I called a few times, and the number was only a busy tone. Either an old number or decoy number to send me on my way. I also asked for information about "Division of Developmental Disabilities" and was given directions similar to: down the hall, take 3 lefts, then 4 rights, go up the stairs, go down the stairs, can't miss it." I did all that. Scoured the whole stinky welfare building, holding my nose (the best parts of it smell like a Motel 6--it's the smell of despair), and never found it. Went back. Reported faulty directions. The worker actually came out to walk me to it, and turns out the office where she thought it was has been acquired by some other sprawling bureaucratic entity now, and a worker there got out a directory and informed us the DDD is actually located across town. Okay... take 6 lefts, 8 rights, 3 diagonals, 8 interdimensionals, put on your 3D glasses, and it's right there, in the 4th dimension. Can't miss it.
Below: the demented labyrinth of social services.
No comments:
Post a Comment