Ah for my loveletter two weeks ago to the excellent service we were getting for Amelia's movement delays. I wrote so generously of the utopian world it called up, where every child, person and family gets the treatment they need, and quickly, too. Where a phonecall to the right city agency yielded a caring case worker and two smart people traipsing to my home to do an evaluation of the baby's needs.
Alas, the process has bogged down. There are not enough physical therapists in the city, it turns out. Despite all the promises the two weeks hence, Amelia would be starting her therapies, week three begins now, and we are still waiting.
Our service coordinator took a bad fall last week and is out sick. Till Friday.
The agency he recommended and hoped would take our referral has a long waiting list. Believe me, I did make some calls, and they really do go by the wait list. Or at least, I didn't know the right people to call, which is, I've learned the way medical fields work.
We are back in the muck of health care in America. And while I will wait to hear from our service coordinator, I just placed a call to my doctor's office, to get a referral to a private infant physical therapist. I did love that feeling, imagined perhaps, of being in a system where access and money didn't matter. It was imaginary, though because the wake up has me in a poor city where there's not enough to go around. And a child with movement delays and can't clap or push up on her arms, who needs some physical therapy now, about whom everyone says it's best to catch these things early, and who has parents who can pay for it, and will, and thus won't have to bear the interminable wait.
I truly believed their promises. I'd rather they have told me the truth: that it's our real world, and filled with scarcity. So I could fiercely protect my baby from day one.
Alas, the process has bogged down. There are not enough physical therapists in the city, it turns out. Despite all the promises the two weeks hence, Amelia would be starting her therapies, week three begins now, and we are still waiting.
Our service coordinator took a bad fall last week and is out sick. Till Friday.
The agency he recommended and hoped would take our referral has a long waiting list. Believe me, I did make some calls, and they really do go by the wait list. Or at least, I didn't know the right people to call, which is, I've learned the way medical fields work.
We are back in the muck of health care in America. And while I will wait to hear from our service coordinator, I just placed a call to my doctor's office, to get a referral to a private infant physical therapist. I did love that feeling, imagined perhaps, of being in a system where access and money didn't matter. It was imaginary, though because the wake up has me in a poor city where there's not enough to go around. And a child with movement delays and can't clap or push up on her arms, who needs some physical therapy now, about whom everyone says it's best to catch these things early, and who has parents who can pay for it, and will, and thus won't have to bear the interminable wait.
I truly believed their promises. I'd rather they have told me the truth: that it's our real world, and filled with scarcity. So I could fiercely protect my baby from day one.