Who Ever Said Life Is Fair?
There were two letters waiting for me when we got home yesterday. One was a second notice from the State of Delaware Dept. Industrial Affairs, telling me that my former employers would not be held liable for discrimination because 1) they only employe two people, which isn't enough for discrimination to count, and, anyway, 2) since my job was not the same job as the other employee (How could it be, with only two people??) they can't make a legal parallel to show I was discriminated against.
The other letter was from the hospital's Patient Relations department denying my request to have Wiggles' Emergency Room visit re-coded so that our insurance company would cover it - even though the doctors who treated her used a different code which IS covered. No explanation for why the request was denied, why one code is better than the other, just basically, sorry, and fuck you, pay us $900.00 because we said so, that's why.
Neither of these letters was new news. They were just reminders, as if the Universe wanted me to be extra-aware of how unfair things are in order to prepare me for more unfairness yet to come. Because, really, why should I ever have thought the universe was fair?
This has been the nature of my faith for going on a decade now - while I believe in God or forces that can save you or sway you, the extent of Her/Their inclination to do so is unpredictable and inexplicable, leaving us, for all intents and purposes, at the mercy of chance. The free will of mankind is a blessed and ugly thing. Young girls are raped and sold into slavery. Mountains crumble, burying shanty towns. Teenagers get killed by drunk drivers. Small town non-profits are run by the whim of volunteers; devoted bookkeepers get ousted by minor shifts in power, petty little people driven by grudges and self-interest. Babies swallow nails, or don't. Single-income families get stuck with huge bills because hospital coding queens protect their mistakes like precious eggs. Life's a bitch.
My mind is not a pretty place these days. Like the God-King said this morning, "I really need something good to happen."
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The Kinglet just finished three days of intensive testing for his case against the school district. The testing all took place in Pennsylvania, about an hour from home. The God-King took off of work so I wouldn't have to navigate and deal with both kids on my own, and we took Wiggles so as to not burden his parents with three more days of babysitting - they've already watched her through all my doctor's appointments, of which I have at least two more upcoming, plus the inevitable IEP meetings that will follow the evals. So we made it a family event, driving up together all three days. It was exhausting.
I had to bring copies of the report from the Kinglet's last medical eval, the one from the children's hospital when he got the Autism dx. Reading through it, I was struck by how little has changed in two and a half years. Then, too, he barely made it through all the interviews; he threw temper tantrums, became non-responsive. I had to sit with him on the couch to keep him calm and focused, and even still the doctors had to cherry-pick which tests to use because he just couldn't tolerate the whole battery.
It will be many weeks until we have the official reports in hand, but after speaking with the doctors afterward (and given my current existential crises) I'm not hopeful for the outcome. Their consensus is that my son has signficant mental health issues - well, no kidding. One will likely recommend that we focus on that rather than any academic concerns, which is the opposite of what we're asking. The other was pushing for us to get him a new psychiatrist, I guess? It was a strange and upsetting encounter and i'm not entirely sure what to take away from it. I told her we have, literally, the only child psychiatrist left in our area. We've either seen everyone or been turned away because no one else is taking patients. But I'm supposed to supply her with a list of providers in our network so she can tell me whether or not she knows them - I'm confused as to how, even if any of them are taking clients now, it would benefit us to switch to one of them (all of whom are in Wilmington), when the doctor we have has been working with the Kinglet for two and a half years, has gotten to know his issues and his reactions to meds, and is located just five minutes from our house.
So I don't know. We were really hoping these specialists would have some amazing insight into what will really, truly, finally help the Kinglet, but my fear is that they'll just rehash what we already know. They might even make things worse. The argument that he's so depressed or disturbed that he doesn't need level-appropriate academics is bone-headed. His issues are going to be there whether you offer him basic common core math (repeated over and over and over until he wants to kill himself from boredom) or slightly accelerated math, which at least offers some stimulation and a sense of specialness and puts him on a career path. Access to enrichment programming gives him access to other gifted children, their influence and society. Denying it makes him feel like he's not good enough, and leaves him in the company of other autistic children, which teaches him how to be autistic. There's absolutely no reason we can't attend to his mental health AND his mind. I mean, what the fuck, people.
But given the recent lack of justice in my world, I'm afraid the people with the power to influence my son's future won't see it that way, and won't have anything to offer.