Things I love Thursdays swiped inspired by Galadarling
Speech Mornings.
Ashleigh has a speech delay. We noticed awhile ago, and last October, we started the process of getting help for her little words to form properly. At the time, Sarah was in speech therapy through the local school district and from there, I was referred to a regional center for children under the age of three. You may know that speech therapy is available at no charge for preschool children if they qualify.
Well, Ashleigh was evaluated and she was definitely lacking in her speech articulation, but didn’t qualify for their program. We were told to ask for a referral from our pediatrician for a speech evaluation with a clinician, which we did, and when we called to make an appointment, we were informed that this office didn’t evaluate kids until they were four.
Back to square one. So, in January, I made some phone calls to a couple of different offices at the Naval Medical Center (the large military hospital that is overwhelming to deal with because it serves all of San Diego) and got in touch with the audioloigist office and had Ash evaluated mid-January. In addition, she was set up for an appointment to be seen with the Ear, Nose, Throat doctor (ENT specialist). What was confirmed by both appointments was that Ashleigh can hear and breathe just fine, both specialists felt it was an articulaiton problem. They referred us to a speech pathologist for a mid-March appointment.
I have to say by this time, I was already feeling defeated in the process of getting Ashleigh help. The timeline was quickly approaching her third birthday, at which point, she would qualify for speech at the public schools, getting a date to be evaluated maybe by May, but certainly they wouldn’t start therapy until they resume in the fall, right? I kept thinking that by that time, we’ll be in Ohio and we will have to start this process all over again. Sigh.
Fast forward to one morning in February at Women’s Bible Study and a new friend of mine had changed tables and we started talking. She told me she had to leave early to go to work and then I went to ask what she did (as in, hey you work? Where? I know, nosy), the worship music began and we didn’t get a chance to finish our conversation. But two days later, we were on the phone and I had the opportunity to chat with her and so I asked, "Hey Gina, what do you do? I didn’t know you worked outside of the home" (or something to that effect). She told me she was a speech therapist one day a week at a local children’s hospital.
Get out!
And this is where you must know that God is bigger than the little plans we have. And where I will always begin to tear up because prayer in fact does change things… I proceeded to share our experience with Ashleigh and the timeline and how I was worried about not getting her talking in time for the fall to start preschool and that we had two months to wait for her evaluaton to get this thing off the ground. Gina so graciously shared how the hospital she works at takes our insurance and how she sees kids come in all the time with approval for evals and 50 therapy sessions and she suggested calling my insurance, changing our referral and pointing us to the right scheduler to call… that was a Thursday night and by the following Monday, we had an appointment for Ash to be evaluated that same week. Two weeks later, she was being seen by Miss Beth at a satellite office of the hospital twice a week.
It’s been just over 6 weeks now, and Ashleigh is certainly making baby steps in her articulation and is working hard twice a week with her speech therapist as well as working daily on various sounds and words. I’m so very grateful that God put Gina in our path at the right time to point us in a better direction than what seemed to be our options for Ashleigh at the time. Thank you, Gina, Thank you, Beth. Thank you, Jesus.
I love her speech mornings.
Ashie with Miss Beth:
She is so proud of her stamp that she earns each time 
