A bleak world this way comes, much like "Dark Angel"

February 8, 2007

Yesterday we went to our son's counselor for a scheduled appointment. He cycled from high to low while there (our son, not the counselor ;). He had been very rude and disrespectful to us before the appointment.

I knew something must have happened earlier in the day, at school, but it always takes a while to find out what it was.

It came out during the session, Cameron was very upset, very sad because he had broken his favorite pen (he has a huge "thing" for pens and will take them apart and reassemble them and take them apart and re-assemble them) during class and got two very small amounts of blue ink on his, currently favorite, hoodie.

With Cameron everything is blown out of proportion so he was very overwhelmed with the fact that the blue ink was on his hoodie, very emotional and crying fully. Fortunately I was able to get it out with bleach and it's good as new now.

His counselor can see now that Cameron needs intensive therapy, more than what he can get when visiting a counselor once a week, but the only way to get him this type of help is for us to go completely broke!

How screwed up is the system that the only way you can get help is to be broke and then give up parental rights?

We CAN'T go broke, our daughter is college bound in three years and even with scholarships she won't have a full ride (she doesn't do sports and unfortunately there's too much emphasis put on sports achievements and not enough on academic achievements even though she's above 88% of the 10th graders in the country).

Today we went to see his psychiatrist and she confirmed that Washington state is NOT the state to be to get mental help for your children.

We thought we were doing the right thing when we uprooted from California and moved here sight unseen but the funding for emotionally and developmentally disabled children is a joke.

We make too much to qualify for help but not enough to pay for help and even if we did have the money to pay for the help (a residential program) it's practically non-existent here.

We thought that with Bill Gates here that there would be more support for these kids and adults. Have we just not found it yet? Bill Gates donated SO MUCH MONEY to another (out of the country) program, why not pay attention to our kids at home that need help getting through life without hurting themselves or someone else.

These kids are SO SMART and if we could just get through the "mud" to the intelligence it would be amazing what they could accomplish.

At least he's finally, once again saying that he'll voluntarily go into the CLIP program and thank goodness the kids are supposed to qualify for this program whether or not the parents are below the poverty line.

It's going to get to the point where we can't even afford to pay the $1000 per month insurance (which only gets us 80% coverage + $1200 deductible and a maximum of 12 covered mental health visits per year!) and then where will we be?

Husband with active epilepsy grand-mal seizures and depression, me with depression, anxiety, Bi-Polar, OCD, fibromyalgia, ibs, and so on and now our daughter is seeing an art therapist that is not covered with our insurance, at the cost of $170 per session!

Guess we won't eat for a couple weeks each month to pay for the sessions, but not eating brings on seizures in epileptics!

Our daughter has decided she's never going to have children because of all the troubles she sees us going through with our son. What a shame as she'd be a terrific mommy but at the same time who wants to bring children into this worsening world?

Got the news yesterday that my mother (haven't been in contact with my parents for about 7 years) gave up custody of their grandson because she can't handle the everyday reminding the child to brush your teeth put on your shoes eat your breakfast find your backpack make your lunch and so on and so on.

And yet she has termed us as bad parents because our son has the same behaviors that her grandson (our nephew) has. He's just like our Cameron, has many of the same problems.

These kids are going to grow up and be unable to contribute to social security, indeed will draw on social security, and the number of children with these problems is growing at such a tremendous rate that there isn't going to be enough of a pool of funds to help the disabled or the ably-retired.

The US is headed for a bleak time, I often refer to it as "The Dark Angel World" ("Dark Angel" is a James Cameron short-lived yet much-enjoyed television series starring Jessica Alba as a very tough girl named Max).

And if my children survive into their later years they may be living this bleak life that I fear is coming. In "Dark Angel" Max always won. Unfortunately that doesn't happen in Real Life...

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