When the Helping Professionals Fail

     There are some general facts to which I subscribe and which are responsible to a large degree for my thinking and actions in certain key areas in my life.


a). The government is not responsible for my health, welfare, or happiness.
b). No other agency is either.
c). If I want something different, then I have to do something different.
d). It takes courage to ask for help.
e). It takes guts to get out when said help is becoming a hindrance.




     Within the past decade or so, I have experienced repeated actions of a particular agency-- whose described mission is to foster vocational rehabilitation among the disabled population who it claims to serve-- which appear to be contrary to its stated mission. The last straw was the supposed procurement of part-time work that I could have performed at home during my own scheduled hours. The job was temporary and seasonal. Although I'd been led to believe erroneously that the work itself would employ my ability to doctor photos [and it actually would not], I was willing to give it a go anyway.


     It was not to be. Contract was supposed to start mid-September until the work ran out sometime in December. I would have had bits of things to do throughout the year after that until the next cycle of mid-September through December [the busy time] and so on.


     State agency had to do its paperwork. Sister agency that was going to pay me for the first one hundred hours or so had to do its paperwork. Meetings had to be held. It became mid-October. Nothing was happening. I received word yesterday that my services would not be needed after all.


     I don't blame the employer for backing out. Business is business. Employer needed someone from mid-September, not from mid-October or afterwards. Neither is this one my fault. No love to the bean counters and pencil pushers for this state of affairs.


sapphoq healing t.b.i. says: I have referred myself to my own factoid labeled e). It takes guts to get out when said help is becoming a hindrance. I'm out. I have other options today. Screw your broken system. If you aren't going to help me, then get out of my way. 

Don't Have a T.B.I. in Kansas

     Even though there really is no "treat" in the word treatment, Medicaid denying access to services for a young man with a complex set of behaviors related to the after-effects of his traumatic brain injury is-- in my unasked for opinion-- inexcusable. The young man is a resident of the state of Kansas. His mother does not know what to do with him or for him. She cannot handle him due to problematic behaviors which have caused him to wind up in jail. While in jail, he had a seizure. The seizures are another, ahem, "gift" of his damaged brain.

     My own experiences with insurance companies causes me to believe pretty much that they are not interested in paying for t.b.i. services. Especially when no-fault car insurance is in effect. No-fault simply means "This ain't out fault and we ain't paying." The workers' comp company was similarly disinterested in paying my bills. Consequently, the only therapies I received were physical therapy [which did help immensely], vision therapy [which has not been medically proven], and a few sessions with a quack "cognitive art therapist" who threw me out because I refused to go to her personal internist to be prescribed medications. [I already had my own most excellent professionals in place]. The word quack is used as an adjective. People who claim to have a PhD [thirty-five bucks and a copy of a book describing her own history with brain injuries-- nine to be exact-- got her a piece of paper] from an alleged mail-order fake college may not be totally honest about their qualifications. I was told in t.b.i. chat that I had to take charge of my own rehab. This certainly has proven to be true.

     But the young man in Kansas is not able to do what I did. Some folks can't because of their level of impairment and that is a fact. Period. Meanwhile, Medicaid refused him admittance to a long-term program of six months to a year as an in-patient in a hospital as a patient with t.b.i. I feel bad for both the young man and his mother. 

     It seems that unless news items involve the word sports or the word veteran, some percentage of the population does not understand, does not wish to understand [in the case of employers and past employers], or cannot understand that head injuries can bring on complex symptoms which don't go away by wishing. A Vermont ski area certainly does not wish to understand [in my opinion via perusal of a court order] that the head and the neck are connected and that headaches certainly do originate in the head. I feel badly for the young man involved in that court case. He was a volunteer at the ski resort and was severely injured when snowboarding off the mountain. His injuries included but were not limited to a traumatic brain injury.

sapphoq healing brain damage says: Rehabbing someone with a traumatic brain injury costs money. Every brain injury is different. What happens to us in the aftermath may be very complex. We who have lived through brain injuries are people and we deserve competent treatment. What price are you insurance companies putting on our heads??? FAIL.






http://www.leaderandtimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=17624:medicaid-denies-treatment-request-for-young-man-with-brain-injuries&catid=12:local-news&Itemid=40

http://labor.vermont.gov/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/KibbieMSJ.pdf