katezilla

You all know Kate right?

We will sometimes call her Katezilla because she has this penchant of running through her brother's elaborately built battle scenes just like Godzilla. It's a thing of beauty, and one day, I'll get it on tape.

Since we visited the Tridas Center a couple of months ago, we have acquired both a behavioral speech therapist and a behavioral therapist. The plain old behaviorial therapist is in-home treatment, the fancier behavioral speech therapist is at an office.

About that same time, my parents (among others) have offered to help us out financially with Kate's medical bills...that is until they saw them. Doh! Rates that would make most of us contractors and consultants blush in envy.

I had been considering it for awhile, but I finally took the first step. A couple of weeks ago I purchased katezilla.com and katezilla.org. I plan on starting a 501c(3) organization so that our family and friends can get something out of any financial help they provide. While I'm at it, T-Shirt sales will go to that same charity (afterall, it was a way to help with costs).

I don't know all the particular rules and regulations just yet, but I'm looking. If you know of anyone (lawyer, accountant) who specializes in charitable organizations that would be willing to volunteer a couple of hours, it would be much appreciated.

What about insurance you ask?

Well, the way Kate was coded, she doesn't qualify for any of these services. Nice huh?

News on the happier front though...I have a friend who works with this guy who has a large, well-connected presence in the Autism community. I asked my friend to ask him if he knew of any resources we could tap. We got a name of someone at USF. I sent the email out around 1 or 2 AM on Friday morning, by the time I woke up, I had a reply. Said person was no longer there, but her boss contacted me. By 11 that morning, Nancy had called me to tell me that Rochelle would be calling us later that afternoon.

Rochelle called around 1...on her day off. She knew and worked with a lot of the summer camps for special needs kids around town providing training and counseling. In fact today, we found an opening at one of those camps.

On Monday, a holiday, we received a phone call from someone else at USF. Another department. That was followed by an email from yet someone else.

Can you say USF rocks?

It's funny, we came from a college town, Gainesville, and we didn't pay much attention to USF. Part of that is probably due to some bad experiences there (at UF). USF has more than made up for that though...all I can say is wow!

We had felt like we stalled there for a little while, now we can barely keep up with the onslaught of USF's help. So nice to be moving forward again...I just hope we can keep up and give back to them half of what they have given to us so far.

As I told the original emailer, we don't mind, "I don't know." Just point us in the direction of someone that might be able to help...USF is pure awesome.