Tuesday, November 27th

I apologize if I am ranting on this entry. I am a little fried today...

This is harder than I thought it would be. It's great having Jo home, but I think it was easier when she was in rehab and all we needed to do was push the nurse button when she needed something. Doing homework with the kids and helping Joanne with her speech therapy assignments. Today both Sam and Oliver where home with coughs and sore throats. Joanne had one too so we were off to the doctor with her this afternoon. Joanne's speech homework was a page of pictures which she needed to identify and write a simple sentence containing the word. Words such as fork, pencil, table and cat are proving to be a great challenge to put into a sentence. She cried with frustration at how hard it was to do this and yet she was able to speak relatively clearly to the doctor today. I am struggling to find the balance of taking care of things around the house and stopping to listen to figure out what Joanne wants to say. Trying to schedule therapy sessions and get insurance approval, I have spent hours on the phone with insurance only to go around full circle back to where I started. We did receive some good news about her speech therapy. The insurance company agreed to pay for ten visits even though the rehab is not in their network. That will get us through till the end of the year, when we get to start over with the insurance paper chase. Hopefully I will be able to get approval for the OT as well and get off the phone for a little while. I am getting tired of talking and saying the same story over and over.

~Paul