Additional Needs

A Good Deed

Posted by Brittney Baumgartner on 15th February 2018 Additional Needs, Disabilities

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This means paying in and out to the insurance companies to meet deductibles and co-pays. It is always nice once you meet that deductible, but the road to get there is pricey and painful.

My son Oliver goes to therapy twice a week for his approved hour long sessions.

When insurance resets and we have to meet our deductible, we have to pay a higher rate for these sessions. Once we meet all we have to, we can pay the lower rate.

Unfortunately this year, I have had to manage a few expenses and come down to figuring that we just could not handle to higher rate with him going twice a week. Simply put, it is just too expensive.

Imagine as a parent, knowing physical therapy is the best thing for your child, and having to come to the decision to cut down session time because of the costs.. It hurts, to the core.

You try to figure other ways you can cut costs, to supply the extra income for these sessions but sometimes you expend all you can.

This was the decision I had to make one day in January, and little did I know a good deed would come from it.

After getting off the phone with Oliver's therapist about cutting down session time, I was determined to spend more time with him at home and supplying what I could for him.

I came across a set of instructions from another family member, on how to make parallel bars for your child. Normally you see these bars used by gymnast, to help work on balance, strength and other areas.

If you make them short and small enough, young children can use the set of bars to hold their weight and walk back and forth on.

This is our number one goal during our sessions, so I thought this was perfect.

I set out to Home Depot with my instructions and kiddos, to make these bars for Oliver. Once inside, a man greeted us and asked what I needed help finding.

I told him PVC pipes, as these are what the bars are made out of, and we followed him to the correct aisle.

After going back and forth on what would fit Oliver best, height, and such, he told me to just go walk around the store and he would actually take my instructions and put together these set of bars.

I was surprised and grateful, as I ultimately had no idea how I was going to manage it after buying all the supplies. 30 minutes or so later, we arrived back in the aisle to a fully assembled set of parallel bars.

We had Oliver do a test walk on them, and they fit perfectly! To our bigger surprise, Home Depot decided they were going to purchase all the supplies for us and we would not be paying a dime.

This company knew nothing about me cutting down therapy time, or money being tight, or anything.

They went out of their way to help my son and I, and blessed us with this amazing, good, deed.