Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Cleaning house for nothing...

Just my luck that the Early Intervention evaluators called AFTER I had cleaned everything to cancel our appointment tomorrow. I am glad Nolan was identified so young, and that I pushed the evaluations to start now, because all the delays/cancellations/postponements can push things out enough as it is.

The wrap-up meeting and implementation of the IFSP is supposed to be on December 6th. I doubt we're going to meet that timeline- they would have to evaluate next week and next week is already pretty tight (Nolan's ABR in Buffalo on Monday and Matthew's eval on Tuesday, not to mention playgroup, MOPS, etc. that I have planned). Luckily I can always cancel going to MOPS and the playgroups.

There are always two evaluators that come out- a special ed teacher and the speech language pathologist. The special ed teacher is out with a family emergency for an unknown period of time, so we can't schedule the evaluation right now. I'm really just venting, but it gets very stressful when you know you're dealing with a child's development and you know your kid is going to need intervention to hear and develop appropriate language skills.

Really, I'm not very good at waiting! Hearing loss teaches you patience - waiting for EI, waiting for a definitive diagnosis, waiting for hearing aids... I just don't want the process to take so long that we get intervention after that critical six-month mark, though I know it is a possibility (with the rate things are going).


Update: The early intervention coordinator called to ask if Nolan had been evaluated yet. I gave her the story, and she said she would call the evaluators on Monday, and if they didn't call me back with an evaluation appointment by Tuesday to let her know. The wrap-up meeting is still scheduled for November 6, so hopefully everything will fall into place by then. By law, it has to.

2 comments:

Megan said...

We have our speech therapist coming over on Monday for her first visit. I think it's the speech therapist! It's hard to keep track of who everyone is that comes to our house. We'll have to compare notes and see how it goes. Luca is 5 1/2 months w/ a mild hearing loss, we haven't got hearing aids yet. Our fitting of the molds is scheduled for Tuesday.

MB said...

I remember I was worried at our first visit because our house had NO SIDING on it. Then the morning they were to come, all the power went out. To top it off, the speech therapist's car keys fell in the sewer and my husband had to go after them! I don't remember if my house was clean but I'm sure they wouldn't have noticed with all the other insanity going on.

Not sure if you know this already, but the service coordinator by law has to complete their evaluation with 45 days of when you first contacted early intervention. So don't let them put you off no matter what their excuse! Once they realize you know the rules, they might try to push them less. Surely they have more than one speech therapist in the county, etc. Good luck!