Over the past couple of weeks I had been formulating a new blog post in my head. I was planning to talk about how great things are going with Alex now. Over the past month, he's made progress in leaps and bounds which is such a relief after a tough few weeks. In his progress report at school, I read the phrases "significant progress" and "excellent progress" in several different places from his various therapists. At my parent-teacher conference, his teacher told me that she and all of his other therapists have noticed a sharp increase in his attention and understanding of what is going on in his classroom. He's able to listen and follow directions much better than before and his language and eye contact have improved significantly, even just since September.
When thinking about it, I've been attributing his progress to several things. He has settled into a good routine this school year which includes full-time preschool as well as hours of therapies outside of school with therapists who know him well and to whom he responds well. We've weeded out therapists that weren't a good fit for him and held onto several that really get good results with him. He waited for months to get into a sought-after center for Occupational Therapy, and is responding very well to his weekly appointment there.
So, yesterday, my husband received word that his company was reorganizing and would have to lay off 25% of their employees. He had been there since the beginning; coming up on five years. He, along with 20 others, was let go. There's never a good time to lose your job, but this timing is very unfortunate. It's an expensive time of year anyway, and our health insurance just reset so we have a fairly large deductible that is adding up right now. It usually only takes us a month or two for the deductible to add up, mainly because of all of Alex's services. With the medical bills showing up in our mailbox and the Christmas bills becoming due, the financial situation could get a little scary soon. I'm pretty confident that Michael can find a job quickly, but the insurance situation is what really scares me. For starters, we'll be starting a new insurance plan for which we will almost definitely have a new deductible to pay up in the beginning, just after paying our current one. Also, we have to worry about what insurance companies are accepted by the two centers we use for Alex's services. The OT center only accepts two insurance companies and if we do end up with a company that is acceptable, if there is any break in services, Alex will have to go back to the bottom of the waiting list. We can pay out-of-pocket to bridge any gap, but it's nearly $200 per session. We wouldn't be able to do that for long!
Michael is very optimistic. He lost his job two weeks before Christmas in 2008 when I was pregnant with Alex and when I had just lost my job as well. The economy was worse and he had less career experience, but was able to find a job quickly and started (at the company that just laid him off) right after the first of the year. Today, the day after getting the news, he already has two interviews lined up so he's certainly not messing around. I'm trying to be optimistic along with him, but at the moment, I can't stop feeling angry. I'm angry that this will most likely affect Alex for the worse. I was so happy with his progress and the great routine we had settled into and now it's going to get disrupted. It's just not fair to him.
