Ann's Story   

One day, a mom came in to the the office and she was crying. She held in her hand a letter from Medicaid saying that her daughter had been denied services. When I could finally calm her down, she told me of her child, Laura, a 7 year old with severe asthma, Cerebral Palsy and about ten other diagnoses. Mom said they were going to have to re-mortgage their house just to get her the therapies that she needed and that wouldn’t last very long. She started to cry again and said when they ran out of funds, they would have to put Laura in a facility to live.

       I looked at the stack of paperwork Laura’s mom had brought with her and it was massive. Laura was so weak from her asthma that she could not walk more than 20 steps without collapsing in pure exhaustion. Having had multiple surgeries, significant development delays, and neurological deficits she required constant care. When she did walk, she had to wear splints to support her legs so that she would not fall and most of the time she had to be transported in a wheelchair. 

    Now, I was beside myself. I asked Laura’s mom to leave the paperwork with me and I would "see what I could do". It didn’t make sense to me that they would deny this child services. I organized the facts and then I started making calls to  people that I knew might be able to help me, help Laura. As you can guess this process was very time consuming and I had other work to do, so during my lunch break and after my work was finished for the day, I would stay and work on my own time.

   It took me the better portion of two weeks before I was satisfied that I had covered all of my bases and made sure everything was in the right place, “i's” dotted; “t’s” crossed; then I gave the packet to Laura’s physician to sign.

   When everything was signed, I called mom. She came right away and got the waiver packet, took it directly to the Medicaid office personally and told the woman there, “my doctor’s nurse worked very hard on this, please, read it”.

    A week later Laura’s mom came back into the office with a stack of papers in her hand. I was so frightened that I had forgotten something or they had denied Laura yet again, but I hadn't seen mom’s face. When I looked up at her there were tears swimming in her eyes but she was smiling. “They approved her!!!,” she screamed. For a moment I was speechless then, after letting out a most unprofessional yelp for joy, we both just stood there in the hall hugging each other and crying. That was truly one of the most memorable moments of my career. That was almost four years ago now.

    Since then, I have worked with many parents to initiate, renew and appeal denials of Deeming Waivers. Our success rate is impeccable and we are proud to be able to help even more families than ever before. 

     "The joy that I feel for every child  and every family that I am able to help is unmatched by anything I have ever done.   It is truly a labor of love for me."