Without a Net

We returned James's feeding pump to the medical supply company yesterday. He still has his g-tube in, but we haven't been doing any overnight feeds since before the holidays, and he's still gaining weight (not quickly, but gaining). He's been eating well recently with both his formula and a variety of regular foods.

And we're caught in one of those absurdities of the modern insurance system. Blue Cross stopped paying for the pump rental because they'd paid as much as it would cost to buy it -- but of course, they hadn't negotiated a "rent to own" option with the supply company, so they hadn't actually bought it, which meant that the supply company started billing us for the monthly rental fees. So we were paying more than a hundred dollars each month for this equipment. Ugh! I probably should have called the insurance company to argue about it (since it's kind of a ridiculous policy to just leave the patient in the lurch), but since the goal was to get him off the pump anyhow, we just decided to return it. Presumably if there's a medical need for it in the future, we'll be able to get it back. But it still makes me a little nervous not to have it in case he gets sick or whatever.

In other medical news, James went for another hearing test today, and it looks like the ear tubes did their job -- his hearing was much better than the previous test, but slightly below his original (11 month) hearing test. He's still mostly in the range of moderate hearing loss (moving toward severe in the highest frequencies). They adjusted his hearing aids to the levels of today's test, which should be helpful since it's more accurate. He's also going to be getting an FM system. This has a microphone that an adult can wear, and an attachment to his hearing aids that makes it sound like we (or a teacher, or whoever is using the microphone part) is talking right next to him, which is very useful in noisy environments. Mike and I have to schedule a time to be trained on how to use it. The audiologist was also very pleased to hear the variety of sounds and intonations that he's making.

And Stanley went to the vet on Monday (he'd scraped one of his claws and it was bleeding, so we wanted to get it checked out).  She said he was doing very well given how serious his injury was when they last saw him, but said he'd probably need another month of restricted activity.  Poor little guy!  He's tolerating being leashed up much better than the crate, though.