Thank You Jesus!!

Most anyone who follows our blog knows that we just got Ryan's diagnosis. That said, we have been extremely overwhelmed and stressed out trying to prioritize finances and treatments in order to best serve his needs. Having an autistic child is not cheap. I should rephrase that. Healing an autistic child is not cheap. We have NO idea if treatments are going to work for Ryan but we can't give up until we try. He needs equipment as well to help keep him safe. The equipment he has needed for a while but we were waiting to see if insurance would cover it and they will but my goodness we have to wait a really long time to get through all the red tape and our child's safety is not something we want to wait for. He needs a harness to keep him from being lost or worse, hit by a car or something of that nature. He doesn't understand the need to stay close to us and it scares us to death. One time lost in the very safe very secure base BX was enough for us to freak all the way out and try to come up with a solution. I just can't imagine if that had happened in an off base mall or something. Uggh, it makes my stomach turn. We are planning to have lots of tests run to find out his biomedical needs so we can start that as soon as possible. These are the things that are going to cost us an arm and a leg but could be well worth it if it helps Ryan even a little bit. We are also planning to start the GFCF (gluten/casein free) diet which is no easy task in itself. All of this has been so overwhelming for us. I thank God that I have been researching Autism for the past three years because I can't imagine how overwhelmed I'd be if this was all new! Add to this stress, the worry that the military could send us back to the states due to lack of services here. Obviously we'd willingly go if it meant Ryan could get what he needed. But it would also mean a significant decrease in our pay and deployments for Eddie. Neither of these things would be good for Ryan or the rest of our family. We'd be less able to buy the treatments he needs and none of us would benefit from Eddie being gone for 6 months and home for six months, and so on. There is another issue that we were facing as well. With the current findings of Ryan's condition and permenancy of the situation, we have decided that it's best for our entire family if we separate fromt he military when our time is up in 4 years. Well, we have lots of debt to pay off first and lots of saving to do, in order to make that possible. We know it's best but it's going to be a lot of work. Being where we are it is possible. If we have to move back to the states, the paycut we'll take would make the separation close to impossible! Well, now for the reason for the title of my post. The two reasons we were possibly going to be sent back to the U.S. was because there was no pediatrician here to oversee Ryan's new medication. Also, there is a home based therapy called Applied Behavior Analysis that children with autism can benefit from greatly. That therapy is not offered here. Well, yesterday I received a call from the pediatrician that there is a child psychologist at a nearby base that will be available to oversee Ryan's meds and answer questions for us when needed. She also will be making periodic trips here to our base to see him. Then last night I was researching ABA therapy to find out what it involved in an attempt to see how much Ryan would/would not benefit from it. Well, in my research it seems he could benefit greatly. Okay, now for the good part. I found a very reputable source online that offers training programs for parents or care providers that are interested in conducting the therapy themselves. For instance, if you run a daycare and want your staff to be educated trained, you can buy the group training program. Or if you are just parents like us that can't access the therapy, you can buy the individual training program! The program was created because ABA typically is not covered by insurance and can obviously cost families an awful lot of money. For us, it's covered IF we had access to it. YAY YAY YAY!!! Happy news for the Baldomeros!!!! GOD IS SO GOOD, HE"S SO GOOD TO ME!!!