Dentists #atozchallenge

If you have landed here from the Blogging from A to Z Challenge (or not), welcome.  
My theme is - Journeying Through the Unknown.   My journey is with an autistic brother-in-law.

Bil dislikes going to the dentist.  Strongly dislikes.

In fact, when we moved him up here two years ago to be closer to family,it had been years since his last dental visit.  To be blunt about it, his breath stunk.  I dreaded  riding in the car with him.  Bil is totally oblivious to the smell, too - a little surprising, perhaps, given how sensitive his senses are.

Yes, he brushes his teeth, although not as much as he should have good dental hygiene.

We've been through this before.  It took quite a bit of effort to get him to the dentist last time, and his mother, who is going on 90, has had so many health concerns in the past three/four years, that her needs always seemed to get addressed first.

My husband is now Bil's guardian.  There is another brother living about 20 minutes from us.  All of us knew this hygiene situation couldn't be allowed to continue, but we couldn't figure out how to get him to the dentist.

Fortunately, fate intervened.

Going to the medical doctor with his mother has always been part of his routine and he's accepted having a primary care doctor.  On a visit last year, we were told their doctor had left the practice.

There was a new doctor, and on her first exam, she mentioned Bil's breath, and the fact it could indicate something was wrong in his mouth.

Lo and behold, suddenly Bil wanted to go to go see a dentist.  His anxiety (an issue with him) had kicked in.

I called our dentist's office and they were willing to see Bil - in fact, if the visit was not successful (i.e. Bil didn't cooperate enough to be examined) they said they wouldn't charge.  This was important, as our dentist does not accept Medicaid.  Almost no dentists in our area do.  Bil  would have to pay totally out of pocket.

So off my husband and Bil went.

This is the waiting room of our dentist.

Bil took a seat, and soon, he was in a dentist's chair for the first time in years.

They had to spread the needed cleaning over several visits, but, fortunately, there was no major work needed other than the cleaning.

Now, his breath smells so much better.

He will go back later this month for a checkup, and he is not being oppositional about it.  But now there is another plot complication - the hygienist who did the previous work won't be there that day.  My husband talked to Bil about it, giving him the choice of moving the appointment or not.  He decided he wanted to keep the appointment as is.

It's a milestone.  Bil has gone to the dentist.  Whether they can teach him to maintain dental health, and whether he will change his habits,  is another matter. 

But at least, we can get him into the habit of periodic cleanings, something his aging mother did not have the energy to do.

"D" day on Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

Special Needs Blog

I promise, I will get back to blogging about Bil.

This will be another short post.  I have found a blog, written by a woman who has three special needs children.  It it awesome reading.  She wrote a post about Medicaid and special needs dentistry.

This woman GETS IT.

In my (ha ha) leasure time I will investigate her blog more.

Funding Cuts

While we were visiting at my mil (and Bil's) home over the Memorial Day weekend, my mil mentioned a letter she had gotten about possible Medicaid cuts.

New York isn't the only state where Medicaid cuts are being proposed.

I want to mention something here about Medicaid.

Too many people think of Medicaid as a program that saavy low income criminals take advantage of, living high off the hog while we middle class workers subsidize their lazy,sponging off the taxpayer lives.

Apart from this (I won't argue if it is or is not a stereotype or a truth) you may not be aware that a lot of people with disabilities depend on Medicaid as a lifeline.  It sometimes isn't much of one, and the system is very broken.

But, without going on Medicaid, as an example, services for developmentally disabled individuals are very hard to come by.

Our introduction to this was about 9 years ago, when we naively contacted the local "ARC" (once called the Association for Retarded Children, this organization has changed its name more than once to keep up with the times - the word "Retarded" being generally considered now in a very negative light) to get a starting point as far as seeing what services might be available for Bil.

At this point in time Bil's parents had never sought to get Bil qualified for Medicaid, considering it a form of "welfare" and not trusting "the government".

What we found out is that the various social services organizations would not provide any services for Bil unless he was on Medicaid.  The way (right or wrong) the system was set up, they could not give him services, even if we paid for them out of our own pockets.

After my father in law died we discovered that Bil was the only person working in his sheltered workshop who was not on Medicaid!

The Medicaid discussion is too complex to talk about in one blog entry, and I am no expert.  But I will say, I wish Bil's parents (my in laws) had taken the steps to get him on Medicaid.  Budgets were already being cut when we made the effort, and it took years.  And now, he may be in danger of losing his medicaid service coordination.

The Medicaid Service Coordination that has gotten him dental services, for one thing.  Bil hadn't seen a dentist for years, and his teeth were in bad shape. 

I will write more about Medicaid Service Coordination at a later date.  And about the trials and tribulations of getting medical and dental care for an individual with autism.  It may not be right away, but one day....