Administrative insanity

I'm drowning in a pile of to-dos. I called someone right back today after hearing her message and she was surprised at my speedy reply. I told her that if I didn't call her back immediately, she would get put on the to-do list. And if she got put on my list she might never get called back.

It's true.

Medicaid has approved our request to hire a personal care assistant for Hannah for 10 hours a week. This is a great and wonderful thing. But as with all good things, they come to those who do lots and lots of paperwork first. (I use "paperwork" loosely to identify all things administrative in nature: phone calls, forms to fill out, reports, etc.) So we have to identify, interview, hire and supervise someone suitable to come into our home and work with our precious love. Of course I am setting the bar at a realistic level. Yeah right. Desperately seeking a brilliant, passionate, energetic med student with a background in PT and OT and an interest in becoming a cerebral palsy specialist.

In addition to pursuing Medicaid, we're trying to get Hannah on the wish list for an Ambucs tryke. This too requires paperwork.

We also have a second opinion on June 4th scheduled at a children's hospital near us to meet with a posse of specialists: an orthopedist, pediatric neurosurgeon and physiatrist (all women I might add-very cool) to figure out next steps with botax and selective dorsal rhizotomy. But this too requires, you guessed it: paperwork. Tracking down the reports from Hannah's last physiatrist visit and her hip x-rays. Filling out questionnaires that they want us to complete before the visit.

And then there is hippotherapy. The OT who's conducting it wants to see the most recent evals from Hannah's regular OT and PT. In this case I'm not actually completing the paperwork, just shepherding it safely from one office to another.

I had dinner with one of my closest friends the other night and neither of us could independently retrieve the actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman's name from our shriveled brains. She said it's because we know so many important and impressive things that there wasn't room for such trivial information. I wish I could believe her. In my case I just think it's the result of my administrative meltdown.