Denied!

So things have been going well, both for Lucas and for us.

Lucas has adjusted to life at the treatment facility and is generally happy there. He’s getting A’s and B’s in their school. He had a girlfriend. She left. He got another one the next day. The staff now knows to keep a close eye on him, so he doesn’t have any opportunities to get into trouble, and therefore doesn’t.

We are getting used to life without Lucas as well. We call him once or twice each week and we visit him every other weekend. And in between we are happy. Life is good. It’s almost like it was before we adopted him. My wife smiles a lot more and is relaxed. And because I don’t have to rush home every day, I successfully took on a big project at work and got a promotion as a result.

As we approached the half-way point of Lucas’ one year stay at the facility we were feeling optimistic about the future. Well, optimistic about the next 6 months or so. We’ll worry about the one-year point when it gets here.

“DENIED!”

That’s what the letter we received from Medicaid said. It referred to their decision not to continue to pay for Lucas’ treatment.

According to Medicaid’s guidelines, Lucas no longer needs treatment. This is because he doesn’t need any medication and because he hasn’t had any serious incidents in the past 3 months. Therefore he’s ready to be released.

Apparently if you take a kid who can’t (won’t) control himself unless he’s watched 24/7, and put him in a place where he is watched him 24/7, you cure him! Amazing! And apparently if you ask him why he’s behaving so well, and he says, “Because someone is always watching”, that doesn’t offer ANY clue to how he will behave outside of that situation.

So we panicked and called the facility. “What can we do?” we asked. They unconvincingly tried to reassure us that this is normal; that Medicaid does this all the time. It’s like a game.

I don’t like games. And given that the last time funding ran out, we were all placed on house arrest, we didn’t hold out much hope for a good outcome.

So we decided to have Lucas stay with us this weekend. This is something the facility sort of hinted at earlier, and suddenly was really pushing. Almost like they were trying to prepare us for having him home for good. Hint. Hint.

I admit I had an ulterior motive. Since Lucas won’t misbehave when others are watching, let’s put him in a situation where others aren’t watching (at least not directly). Then we can document his behaviors in the real world. This was not setting him up for failure. This was placing him in a situation where he would normally be expected to behave. A situation Medicaid says he is ready for.

I have a feeling this weekend will show us what life will be like when he returns. We are about to see our future.