So what does failure to thrive feel like? For Jachin, being tired, being hungry, scared when separated from mommy and daddy (no toddler room at church for him for a longgggg time), frustrated with the lack of ability to communicate and with others for not understanding him. For Kaya, middle child syndrome, feels unimportant and ignored. For Torin, being the oldest, feels unfair. Still needs mommy but is pushed to do more and more alone, to “figure” it out himself because mommy has to try and get Jachin to eat right now. For mommy, guilt as she considers what she did wrong or didn’t do right, when pregnant, that could have contributed to her child’s lack of growth, guilt that she didn’t notice the problem earlier, frustration that she can’t spend more time and attention on her other kids, sadness that when her husband comes home she can barely smile at him because she is so tired, and fear that it will happen again with her next child. For Jason, the weight of the world, as head of the family, is on his shoulders. Thankful for a God that loves and upholds us through our emotional struggles, that speaks truth through His word and others, and that cares about the day to day needs of our lives, that has a purpose for our lives and circumstances.

So once your child has been diagnosed failure to thrive, what do you do? Well again, for our child, the most important thing we did was immediately get bloodwork done “the life is in the blood” according to the Bible. Jachin’s bloodwork showed that he was severely iron, vitamin d, and protein deficient. He had multiple other levels that were off, either high or low. So began the “protein” push. I made a high protein, with meat, meal/puree for Jachin every 3 hours and made him eat something. Smaller meals more frequently. Then began the supplements iron, cod liver oil, vitamin d drops, probiotics, liquid multi-vitamin, etc. I can’t even remember at this point everything we did. Thankful for the fact that Jason and I had already spent several years learning about health and how the body works so our level of research was a much lower burden then it would have otherwise been.

What does failure to thrive look like? Well for our son, it was low weight gain or weight loss, lost ability to speak and regressed back to only speaking his first word “dada”, stopped napping and wouldn’t sleep through the night which led to being too tired to eat, which led to not sleeping, stopped teething so harder to eat more dense and hardy foods, separation anxiety, constant neediness and a myriad of other things. Of course looking back, we can now see how all of those were symptoms but when you are so tired, and constantly in the situation, it is difficult to see outside and look in to see the connection. This is one of the reasons community is so important. Thankful for Christy ‘Robbins’ Geaslen who was my ‘bouncing ideas off of” buddy and was able to give me an outside perspective and see that things were off because she saw Jachin on a routine basis at play date.

This last year has been a very rough season for my family. November 2015 we realized that Jachin (our 3rd) wasn’t gaining weight very well. In January, we took him to the pediatrician. She had us bring him back in February. At that time, he was diagnosed “failure to thrive”. He had actually lost 2 pounds in that month between January and February. This last year has been filled with doctor’s visits, supplements, bloodwork, trying all sorts of new schedules for him, frustration, worry, and exhaustion. I (Anne) was also pregnant and then had a newborn through this journey. He is doing so much better now but we are still working on his health and every day I never know what kind of child will wake up. The one who is feeling off, which is usually accompanied by a day full of him screaming, or a child who feels well which is usually a day full of giggles, laughter, dancing, singing, hugs and kisses. To top it all off, he is now 2 years old so it is sometimes hard to figure out if the behavior is typical 2 year old stubbornness or a 2 year old who doesn’t feel well. It has been a long journey, which isn’t over yet, but the road looks a little less bumpy in the future. We will be doing more bloodwork at the beginning of March. So thankful for Healthy Kids Pediatrics, Dr. Rebecca Martin and Agape Clinic, and Vaughn Lawrence of Spirit of Health who have helped us, and are still helping us, take care of our precious little boy. Thankful for the women of our church, Calvary Chapel Rock Harvest, as they prayed with me and hugged me during these rough days and nights.

Hi everyone

We wanted to give an update on Jason’s rattlesnake account so here it is.

It has almost been a year since Jason, got bit by a rattlesnake on his foot and spent 3 days in the hospital (2 in ICU) with another ER trip 3 weeks after . I thought it would be a good time, while I have the time, to give a brief update on how he is doing and on the financial impact on our family caused by the medical bills.

First, a great big thank you to everyone for praying. There were literally hundreds of people, spread out all over the world, praying for Jason. “let your requests be made known unto the Lord” and “pray without ceasing” were definitely invoked on our behalf.

Secondly, a great big thank you to all those who donated financially. We had so many people drop off money from amounts of $50 to $1,000 to help pay medical bills. During this time, we also had to finish paying a midwife and a dentist for Jason’s root canal (that he had 2 days before the snake bite, yes, he had a bad weekend).

One of the amazing things about the medical bills is that we told very few people how much the actual bill was. We weren’t trying to hid the amount but we also didn’t want to advertise it so we figured if people wanted to know they would ask. I will try and give a brief description of how those medical bills were taken care of by the Lord.

We didn’t have insurance. The doctors charge separately from the hospital. Therefore, we had bills from the individual doctors, the bloodwork bill from the hospital, all the follow up bloodwork, the ultrasound bill, and the bill from the hospital as well as the ER bill from the second hospital. (8-9 bills total) Before any discount for being uninsured, the bills came to a total of about $190,000. The hospital bill from where Jason was treated was the bulk of the bill at $182,000. Through all the donations we received as well as the discounts from the individual doctors and the discount for the after care bloodwork through the clinic at Jason’s work, and a little bit of savings, we were able to pay all but 3 of the bills. The last three bills were the 2 individual hospital bills and one of the doctors. We decided to negotiate all three of those bills. Thankfully, Jason had a resource with which to help him. He had bought a book titled, “How to Survive Hospital Costs Without Insurance“. The premise of the book is basically (1) Hospitals never tell us in advance how much something is going to cost. In essence they are asking us to sign a blank check. (2) Insurance companies negotiate with hospitals in advance, to get reduced prices. This means hospitals might have dozens of different rates they regularly charge for the same service. The author’s  research indicates Blue Cross Blue Shield, for example, often pays only 12 cents for every dollar billed by the hospital! (3)Holding hospitals to an objective third party standard is perfectly lawful and reasonable, and,  with the knowledge of how to lawfully contract/negotiate in good faith, it is possible to get the same price breaks that insurance companies get.

It was now time for Jason to put what he had read into practice. Many nights of research, reading, letter writing and often staying up until 4 a.m. to get a certified letter out on time while keeping meticulous records and copies of all correspondence, led to the small ER bill being settled for 1/4 of the price (which we were able to pay for through donations) and the other two bills (the doctor and the main hospital bill which had been reduced to 109,000) being dropped by the hospital/doctor, rather than negotiating/settling with us. We never had to pay on either of them. It is a little involved to explain the process of how all that happened but here is a very basic summary: Over a period of 6-8 months we sent many certified letters asserting the Hospital  provide simple things like  a breakdown of the charges, and evidence of a third party standard to base their charges( in one letter we made a binding offer to agree to cover any extra administrative cost they might incur in providing evidence of the third party standard). Our letters also included  asserting a reasonable time limit to respond to our inquiries, and asserting that they only communicate with us in writing to avoid possible misunderstandings, and asserting that if they had any objections to what we were asking for and stating, they needed to let us know in a timely manner and not harbor objections which to surprise us later.. We also sent several generous  conditional payment offers (checks/payment plans that would eventually expire if they didn’t cash/accept them) that they could settle for in lieu of their not providing the the third party standard, and they had several months to consider or accept  these or re-negotiate OR provide us  with evidence of a third party standard for their charges. We were very prompt and timely in communication with them, however one stopped communicating with us, while another had a law firm send us a letter. When we responded to the law firm with a letter quoting several things from a law dictionary and asking some pertinent questions, and included a certified copy of all the correspondence between us and the hospital, the law firm  subsequently disappeared never to be heard from again.   Eventually, we sent an official notice of default on the bill, inviting the hospital to dispute  the default, which they did not do. I do want to make it clear that our intent the whole time was to pay the bill, but, we wanted to know the prices they were charging for the service.

We learned a lot in the process about how messed up the business side of hospital care really is. and discovered some doctors who truly  call things as they are, including Dr. Keith Smith of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma. See several of his following video commentaries for some interesting commentary. Episode 3: “The Story of the $100 hospital aspirin” , Episode 3 (Part 2): “The higher the hospital charge, the more the PPO makes“, Episode 3 (Part 3): “Understanding the lies hospitals tell to make money .

We are so thankful for the guidance of the above mentioned  book as well as the access we had to ask questions of the author via a forum once we had bought the book, as well as all the money that people donated through the leading of the Lord. It started to become a little bit of a joke because every time we received a donation, within a day or two, we would receive a bill.

Our savings are basically gone but my husband is here, we are still out of debt, and our credit record is preserved What a blessing!!

How is Jason physically? Well, he still has random pain. Sometimes his foot will have an ache in it for 30 minutes or so and he says the pain travels. It is usually in his heel or at the location of the bite. We haven’t found a reason for the pain. He hasn’t started running on it yet but he is planning on starting soon. We had a follow up blood test about a month ago and everything looked good. We will plan on doing another blood test in 6 months. If that one is fine, it will probably be the last one.

Blessings

Jason