Jon will be in Defiance to stay by Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!

Mom, Jon and I met with Medicaid Waiver Program today at 1:00. We talked to them for 2 hours and 40 minutes!!! The bed and hoyer will be paid through regular Medicaid but need to be ordered by a PT or OT. That will need to be ordered through the current ODJFS case manager. All requests will need to go through the case manager. The assessor for the waiver will submit his paperwork on Monday. It could take as little as 4 weeks or as long as 3 months to get approved. The approval letter will be sent to whatever Jons address is in Medicaids system. So it will follow him to Defiance. The safety assesor still needs to come out from Toledo to do his part. Once the waiver is approved, they will assign a case manager out of Toledo.

We are still going to move Jon to Defiance, it just won't be to Moms. Since his wound is not healed yet (Jon said that it had not changed in 2 weeks but this week it has started to fill back in again) and the infection is in the bone Medicaid said he will need to be in a facility. As soon as the assessor left, I asked Jon "So when do you want to go to Defiance?" He said "Tomorrow". (I knew the answer I just wanted to hear him say it).I asked "Even if it means going to another facility instead of Moms'?" He said "Yes, at least I will around more family and my friends." This will allow Medicaid time to get things approved and time for us to get the addition done or at least the walls up. It obviously won't be tomorrow (today as most of you read this) but it will at least be before Christmas. Mom walked over to the Social Workers office and gave her the name of the place in Defiance and she is starting the process.

The Medicaid waiver program will pay for the modification of Jon's current bedroom into a bathroom but it needs to go through the whole bureaucratic system. We can not start getting approval for that until we have the initial approval described above. The assessor said to plan on waiting 3 months for anything Medicaid needs to approve. They also will need to post the bathroom improvements on a bid website. All contractors need to have a medicaid provider number. We can request a certain contractor, however they will still need to post it for bids. There's no guarantee that Dean & Jon's friends can do the bathroom. He confirmed that Medicaid will not pay for an addition so that can still be done by Dean & Jon's friends.

We are all so pumped. Thank you to everyone that prayed for Jon to be home by Christmas.

Gotta go. This is the 6th night in a row that I have gotten to bed at 11:30. Charlie, my dog, has also been getting up alot at night so I am getting even less sleep. His digestive system is messed up. I am hoping to get a full nights sleep tonight, we'll see.

God bless you all.

Barb