About 3 weeks after we had Em's Cartoons Benefit, I received a very important letter in the mail. It was a letter that stated that a secondary insurance that I had applied for back in April of this year for Emmalin, Medicaid for Disabled Children, had been approved. I couldn't believe it! I just start crying. This single letter had changed our lives forever (or at least until March 2012 when we will have to apply for it again). What this letter means is that people will still bill our primary insurance first (through Jarrad's work) for all of Emmalin’s things but then instead of billing us, they will then bill MoHealth.net (Medicaid for Disabled Children) our secondary insurance. So we really shouldn't have to pay anymore medical bills (besides co-pays), prescriptions (except for the Canada one that insurance never covered), parts of therapies (at the Meyer Center), and equipment (wheel chairs, leg braces, vests for trunk support and so on).
Before we got this, in Em's therapy, we were paying (of course after our 500 deductible before anything else) 20% of 30 weeks (twice a week) and then 100% of everything after that. We had raised $6,900 the night of the Cartoons benefit and to be honest, I wasn't 100% sure it was going to cover all of Emmalin's therapy costs for the year.
We went to see Emmalin's neurologist, Dr. Weisenberg, in September and she had said that Emmalin needed to be in more therapy. All I could think of was that we were doing the best that we could with the money we had (knowing that she was going to the Meyer Center 2 days a weeks -one day OT, and the other day PT and feeding therapy). As soon as I got that letter stating Emmalin had the secondary insurance, I called the next day to increase her therapy sessions to twice a week for OT and PT. She was also able to start water therapy at the Meyer Center because it was covered under the PT - one hour a week. 
Now we can use the money that we raised to go for other thing that she needs, that are still very necessary! Like trying “extra-curricular therapies" (Hippotherapy, music therapy, craniosacral therapy) to see what she likes and what works best. We can also try the intensive therapy which is 3 weeks for 3 hours a day. It is $3,500 for the 3 week session and that doesn't include the hotel! I have been told that in intensive therapy, a child can possibly grasp in 3 weeks (developmentally) what it would normally take them to 6 months to learn. We also still have about $150 a month in Pediasure with Fiber for Emmalin's main source of food. And of course there are still some travel costs for all of our St. Louis trips. So all this is being said, yes, we still have a lot of places for this money to be going, but now we actually have the opportunity to give Emmalin everything that she needs, instead of the bare necessities (especially therapy wise). So just for future reference, this is what we will be raising money for in future benefits!
We feel so lucky and so blessed to have finally qualified for Medicaid for Disabled Children for a secondary insurance! Like I said before, it has truly changed our lives!
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