Cassel Crew: Shands/Orlando

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Shands/Orlando

Jasmine was air lifted to Shands from a hospital in Georgia when she was born. After ten days of observation, she was returned to GA. Shortly after that, I met her and took her home as a foster child.

She has had a lot of surgeries there, and a couple in a hospital in Northern GA. But mostly Shands.

Then our insurance (she has medicaid as part of her adoption, but we put her on Tricare) decided she didn't need to go to Shands. She should be seen at the University of Alabama. If Tricare had just denied her access to Shands, we could have used medicaid. But they didn't. So we had all her paperwork sent to U of A. They said they didn't want to work with her when she'd been with a different hospital for so long.

After 2+ years, we received a referral to Shands. So off to Shands we went this past Thursday. And as expected, she has one more surgery on both her lip and nose to go. These last ones take place after the child is full grown. And she is full grown at 4'9.5" We put it off until summer though.

We also discussed why her testing said she did not have EEC syndrome when she very obviously has that or a very similar syndrome. More advanced testing will be done before she decides whether or not to have birth children.

Since we were so close to Orlando and there was no school Friday (and there isn't school Monday or Tuesday for two of my kids, Kayla has to go back Tuesday), we decided to go to Universal/Islands of Adventure on a special three day pass.

Friday wasn't very busy in the parks and we walked right on to many of the rides, although there was a wait at the new Harry Potter ride. But we rode the old one twice in a row!