Morning Day 2 of the New Year, 2018; I have to work so I took William to Children World Preschool (Mitchell school is still on break until Jan 8, 2018 so William will spend his time at the day care full day this whole week).
Menu for this week, today lunch is served with Beans & Bacon with sandwich, I don’t think William would want to eat.
ABEST still have not received the authorization from Cal-Optima for William’s ABA services yet so there won’t be any Behavioral Technician coming to the daycare for William. 2 months contract with Magellan has ended on 12/31/2017 so ABEST is waiting for the new contract from Cal-Optima because Magellan is not handling ABA services anymore as of 1/1/2018. If ABEST doesn’t receive the new contract soon, William will no longer receive any ABA services at the day care; However the sessions at home is still on.
I hope ABEST will receive the new contract soon; otherwise William will spend the whole day at the daycare without any BT to help him.
4:45 pm Ms. Nhu from ABEST called telling me that William at the day care was scratching all over his body; Celestie was the Behavoral Technician with William at the time.
I called Mr Gary but he did not answer. Few minutes later he returned my call and his first words were “Your son is fine”. Then he told me that William threw up, and his eyes starting to get swollen and he was scratching all over his body. He gave him some Benadryl which I think helped a lot because by the time Tim picked him up, he was scratching less, his eyes still swollen though. He said he asked Celestie if she gave William some peanut butter chocolate but she said no. They just had a photo session with Santa Clause at the day care, and Santa gave out peanut butter chocolate and candies to the kids. Mr. Gary believed that William must eat some of it; otherwise he’d not be allergic like this.
Then when Tim picked him up; Ms. Celestie asked to talk to me on the phone. She said sorry that she did not know that William is allergic to peanut butter so when William asked for it, she gave it to him. William took 1 bite then threw the chocolate away. Soon after that he threw up (I’m not sure who changed his clothes but he got home with school clothes on him) and 10 minutes later he started to feel itchy. She said Sorry so many times. I’m just so glad that William is fine after this incident. According to Mr. Gary, he did not have trouble breathing at all so that’s a big relief.
When I got home from work and found that William was happy as usual, jumping up and down; his eyes were still swollen and he scratched his body here and there but other than that, nothing is serious. And most importantly I don’t see he has breathing problem at all.
And this happened just a few days before Christmas!
Nov 1, 2017. We got approval from Magellan at the last minute before the month of Oct ended; the contract from Magellan is valid till end of this year which means we have 2 months with Magellan. Then after that we need to get approval from Cal-Optima because according to Ms. Nhu, Magellan will no longer handle ABA Services for Cal-Optima beginning Jan 2018.
Monday 5:30 PM. We met our new BT today, Ms. Selestie. Also came Kevin the Supervisor and Ms. Annie for Parent Training. From the Nov calendar, we will see Ms. Selestie a lot.
Ms. Eraj some how is not on the Nov calendar anymore; not sure why. She only came 2 times last week. Look likes Ms. Selestie is replacing Ms. Eraj.
Halloween is approaching so I asked Mrs. Nhu if it’s ok to have ABA session while William going Treat or Trick on the Halloween day so she suggested to cancel the Friday session and have the session on Saturday at the shopping center in Fountain Valley. We agreed to meet Ms. Han in front of the Albersons supermarket.
I dressed William up as a car racer Lightning McQueen and took him to the meeting place. 10 minutes passed 11:00 I still didn’t see Ms. Han anywhere, turned out she went to wrong location and was waiting for us there. So while waiting for Ms. Han to come to us, I took William for Treat or Trick. At first William did not want to walk but I told him we could get candy if he walked so he started to comply. We walked along the shopping center and went in each store to get candy. William had a hard time to pick the candy when people presented a bowl of candy in front of him. Also when people hand him the candies he reached out his hand to take it instead of showing his basket so that they can put the candies in. It was his first time so maybe he was overwhelmed and did not know what to do. It struck me that I did not teach him that!
We found a table near by the pizza place, so we sat down to rest and let William enjoyed his earned candies.
Few minutes later Ms. Han found us; we continue our way to knock on the stores for more candies. It was about noon so we decided to go back to the pizza place and have lunch there. I bought a slice of pizza and 1 drink for William. We found a cozy corner inside the restaurant and ate lunch there. William kept standing on the chair and go under the table; until I let him watched the Winnie the Pooh clips that he sat still. There’s a game room inside the pizza shop so we let William play in the game room after lunch.
As I was told before, today we met a new ABA technician named E. Afzal; she’s a young Indian lady. Supervisor Kevin came too. William mostly came to Kevin, I guess because he needs time to make acquaintance with Ms. Afzal. At first I didn’t see her smile but maybe she was nervous being with a new client? Later on she smiled more but I’m not sure if William likes her yet.
Later Mrs. Nhu came to talk about the situation with Magellan: we still have not heard from Magellan yet and the contract with RCOC is about to expire in 2 weeks. I’m a little bit worried.
Mrs. Han from ABEST is now back to teach William starting this week for 3 days a week (Mon, Tues, Thurs). I think he remembers her because he acted so happy to see her.
Ms. Han and Annie were the first ones to teach William since we started with ABEST. Ms. Han came to Children world’s preschool for almost everyday in the first 2 months when we got the fund from HealthNet insurance. There she helped him eat using utensils and read books to him. Other kids liked her too that they hang around when she read books to William.
I just wish that with the funding source from Medi-Cal, we can have ABA services at the day care.
Currently with the funding source is RCOC, they don’t fund ABA services taken place in the day care, in home service only. So this is why William can only receive ABA services at home AFTER day care hours, 5:30 PM – 8:15 PM everyday.
At the day care after his nap, William always finds a corner to sit in and not playing with other kids; this is the reason why I’m so desperately hoping we’d get funding for ABA services at the day care so that there will be someone there to “drag” him out of his favorite corner and to learn how to interact with peers or at least enjoy the playground or play with toys instead of sitting alone and watching other kids having fun.
Welcome back Ms. Han; We’re happy to see you, a very nice young and patient lady with a soft voice.
Mrs. Nhu from ABEST called to cancel today’s session with William and also the rest of the week. She said they need to have the staff meeting first then she would update me soon. I had no idea what was going on but I did not ask more because I wanted her to have time to deal with it first (whatever it is) before I ask more questions. I simply responded “OK, hope everything goes well!”.
I guessed maybe it’s the billing/payment issue?
Friday 4:00PM.
I texted Mrs. Nhu asking when we could resume session. She said “I will reach out to you when you come back from vacation on Tuesday to set up a clinic meeting”. I had no idea what is a clinic meeting, but I just simply said “OK” because I knew we will find out soon.
Wednesday 12:56.
I texted Mrs. Nhu that “we’re back, what’s that clinic meeting that you talked about?”
– “Could I schedule a clinic meeting with you for tonight? At 6:00 pm for consultation. We will be discuss about our transition team and the barriers that we encounter and review client service agreement.” – Mrs. Nhu responded.
Of course I said yes because I want my boy to be back in ABA sessions as soon as possible.
Wednesday 5:30 PM, ABA technician Dan showed up at my house. I was so surprised; I thought all sessions were canceled until we had a talk with Mrs. Nhu later this evening.
6:00 PM at my house. Mrs. Nhu came. She was surprised that she saw Dan at my house too.
So after Dan left, Mrs. Nhu & I sat down on the table to talk. It turned out it was not the payment issue with RCOC like I thought. It was me who caused the issue!
Last week, the ABA technician Dan sent email to every one in the team that he felt “uncomfortable walking into a client house knowing that he’s recorded”. And that he requested to cancel all sessions with William last week! I almost cried! Is that it? he should know that we have security camera all around the house and in the living room where the ABA sessions taken place. “He suspected that I took photo of him”. This I did not deny; I got the new iPhone so I was testing the various portrait modes in the iPhone 8 Plus: I took several pictures of him and William during the session on Tuesday. I did not know that made him felt uncomfortable and did not want to continue the sessions; but why did he show up today acting like nothing happened? That Mrs. Nhu could not understand either!
Long story short, we had a long and clear conversation about the issue; Mrs. Nhu proposed the solution is to cover the camera in the living room whenever we have sessions with her staffs; and I will never take photos or videos of the sessions. I cried toward the end of the meeting; mostly because I think it’s just a silly reason that the sessions were cancelled. A few pictures would cause that big of a issue? (I cried later at night too; I felt so sad thinking that having an autistic child is hard enough, why people would add more to my burden because of some non sense reasons. I just simply don’t understand why people can be so sensitive about a few pictures.).
Thursday Morning.
Mrs. Nhu sent me email confirming the sessions would be resumed started today with Kevin. And that Dan would be out of the case; and Mrs. Han will replace him.
Now I’m relieved that William can continue to learn. I think he has been learning a lot from these sessions; that’s why I so value them and the ABA staffs that teaching him.
Tuesday 10 AM, Mrs. Hana from Mitchell called. She said William had been limping for 40 minutes now; he looked happy so she wasn’t sure if he was doing that just for fun. She also sent me a video of William limping via classDojo app. From the video it’s obviously that he was hurting that’s why he’s limping but he looked happy walking around the area. I messaged back to Mrs. Hana asking her to have the school nurse checked him out. 11 AM, Mrs. Hana called and said the nurse and the physical therapy (who happened to be in school at the time) took a look at his leg but could not find anything abnormal.
So I took off work around 11:30 AM, picked William up early; he was eating lunch when I came. He was still limping but I didn’t see any pain from his face. I called the doctor Huy’s office to make appointment; and they set us up at 2:00 PM. It was still early for our doctor appointment so I took him home.
Waiting for Dr. Huy (Magnolia Medical Center)
2:00 PM. Doctor Huy Nguyen took a look at his leg, watched him limping around, touched his feet but William but could not find anything wrong either. He said to give his leg some warm water and massage it.
William and ABA Staff Dan are having snack time. William is looking at Dan’s cup.
He felt asleep around 4:00 PM on our bed; after he woke up around 5:30 PM, he stopped limping. And I didn’t even give him a massage yet!
No one knows what happened; and William doesn’t talk so we’re clueless. Hopefully it’s nothing major. Dr. Huy said to observe, if it doesn’t go away then we might have to take X-ray to check out. Hopefully we don’t have to go thru that.
Later when he had session with ABA Staff Dan at 5:30 PM, he’s totally fine, no more limping.
William saw me walking to the living so he followed me there. He turned on the light and then pushed all the magazines from the coffee table to the ground! So Mr. Dan set a mission to make William put up everything back on the table before he can play.
His method is to get William’s attention on a toy, then ask William to clean up before he can play the toy.
First Dan tried to blow the bubbles and made some noise with domino. William didn’t seem to be interested in that: he kept playing and sitting on the magazines without looking up. Then Dan tried different toys but William did not care either. Finally Dan asked me for William’s ipad: the most powerful enforcer!
So Dan turned on YouTube, played some videos on the iPad; and soon William came to him. So iPad won!
– “Hi William, do you want iPad? – Dan kept the iPad and would not let William touched it.”
– “iPad”
– “You will have iPad but fist let’s clean up the magazine first and then we get to play with iPad.”
So they both went to the coffee table.
– “Dan’s turn to clean up” – Dan put some magazines on the table while he said that. “William’s turn to clean up” – he gave some to William and asked him to put on the table. William did a few times and then refused to do it.
– “Sorry William, you have to clean up first.” So Dan went back to the dining table, turn on the iPad; and push up the speaker volumn.
William hang around the coffee table a bit and then ran back to the iPad. Mr. Dan repeated the same thing. “Let’s clean up first, then iPad!”
This time William helped to put all the magazines back on the coffee table but as soon as he done, he pushed everything back on the ground!
– “Sorry William, that’s not right, clean up first before we can play.” – So Dan took the iPad with him to the dining room.
William ran to the iPad. Mr. Dan said the same thing!
4th time, finally William was compliant; with Mr. Dan’s help to put all the magazines on the table and did not push them down again.
I was so impressed with the way Dan handled the situation with a very calm voice and patience.
Hopefully this way William will understands that if he messes things up, he needs to clean up.
