This weekend Noah's daddy was invited to go to the NHRA Mile High Nationals at Bandimere with out of town company so Noah's grandma accompanied us for the first time to hippotherapy to watch Noah's progress. We also were blessed with an audience to cheer Noah on this therapy session by Bill and Marge, who came to watch "cowboy Noah." It meant so much to have them come, nearly 3 1/2 years later and Bill has never left Noah's side since holding his tender foot just minutes after coming off life support. To have people rally around Noah with tremendous love, hope and prayer always fills my heart. On our most difficult days it's nice to know that there are people who still care, who still love Noah... just the way he is.
Noah is loving having company visit him, he is full of extra laughs and smiles, and it's great to see how much he has connected with others. We took him to Joe's Crab Shack tonight for dinner. We were asked to wait while they found a table to accommodate a wheelchair. We were ignored for a long while until the hostess turned to me and said it would be a 35 minute wait. Although I knew what she was attempting to do was discourage us from being there and attempting to find a way to get us to leave as there was no crowd waiting to be seated. I felt the immediate pressure of how to respond and decided that I didn't want to make my guests uncomfortable and offered to leave and find another place to eat instead of fight it out and say we had just as much right to be there as anyone else did with a child - special needs or not. Just as I was getting ready to turn to leave, the waiter stepped in and said no I made a place for them. The hostess seemed flustered that I wasn't shushed out fast enough, but we were seated nonetheless. I felt a bit bad that others detected what a moment is often like for us when I'm out in public with Noah, you hate it when your difficulties overflow onto someone else. But so very thankful that they understand and love us for all that we are and accept our special needs journey and all the difficult moments that go along with it. They weren't a bit embarrassed to be with us, even feeling that we were initially not welcomed by the hostess there.
Dinner was great, and our waiter, Huong, more than made up for the rude hostess. His humor, kindness and amazing and friendly service was exactly what we needed. He even invited us all to get down and dance... so I did. After all, in the most difficult moments life has to offer, I always hope that my children learn from my example and can dance through some of the hardest and most painful moments in life.
SSI gave Noah two month's worth of back payments and have withdrawn the overpayment they were seeking form us. I relief, but we are still very cautious and guarded that another overpayment request could come our way at anytime. SSI also warned that Noah's Medicaid could temporarily lapse but that the computer system has been notified he is still eligible. They also "estimated" Chris' wages lower in attempts of preventing Noah from losing benefits in August. I'm not sure why they couldn't have done that sooner, although they say they always calculate higher so that it avoids overpayment problems - their "estimations" thus far have only resulted in us losing benefits altogether. However I'm going to take this good news, pray that it continues and just take things one day at a time.
"We, the one's who are challenged, need to be heard. To be seen not as a disability, but as a person who has, and will continue to bloom. To be seen not only as a handicap, but as a well intact human being."
-- Robert M. Hensel
Love,
Noah's Miracle by Stacy Warden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.