When I finally returned to work and school, there wasn't a childcare facility willing to take my (now vaccine-induced) special needs child into their care. They were afraid to accept him due to all of his medical issues. After many failed attempts, I finally found an in-home facility (Dena's Daycare) willing to take the risk.
Dena's husband, Phil, worked for the Garfield County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) transporting foster children from one foster home to another. When he wasn't driving the children around, he spent his time in the office, filing the case workers paperwork. During one of those down days, Phil came across a memo in regards to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Knowing our vaccine injury story, Phil made a copy of this memo and brought it home to his wife. Dena then gave the copy of the memo to me. This was our introduction to VICP.
There were two attorney's names and their contact information on the memo. One attorney was located in Cheyenne, Wyoming (Jack Gage). The other was located in Wichita, Kansas (Andrew Hutton).
Andrew's vaccine injury story cont'd
Andrew @ Dena's Daycare, December 1988. He has stitches by his left eye because of a fall brought about by vaccine-induced Acute Cerebellar Ataxia.
With a fast approaching filing deadline listed, I contacted the nearest attorney to me (Andrew Hutton). He was just 100 miles away, but it may as well have been a thousand. I didn't have a reliable car to make the drive up nor did I have the money to pay for the gas, so we managed our business through collect phone calls (I didn't have a phone either) and overnight packages charged to his account. To expedite the process and to ensure all paperwork was in on time for our case, I drove to each doctor’s office and hospital to gather all copies of the medical records pertaining to Andrew, from birth to (then) current, as well as all of my medical records pertaining to the pregnancy and his birth. Then the wait began….
Six months after filing our claim with VICP, we received word the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services medical staff accepted our claim as valid, but they were not yet ready to decide on an amount. There was still work to be done. The claim was then sent to the Department of Justice, where they determined they needed current medical documents and scheduled someone to come by our house to do a Life Care Assessment Plan for Andrew. From there, the claim went on to the Special Masters where our case got hung up for a few years as they determined the settlement amount.
A year following acceptance of our claim, the Life Care Assessment Plan coordinator stopped by our house and, a few months following this appointment, my son and I moved to Arizona where we met with many more doctors in an effort to recover his fine motor skills. I found a decent job and our (difficult) life went on. I stayed in touch with our attorney, keeping updated on the case progress.
I finally received a letter from VICP in the mail stating they were planning to settle the claim by a certain date. I was elated and relieved… My son needed help NOW, well beyond what my meager income could provide. But as the date drew near, I received yet another letter letting me know our deadline for settlement review had been postponed and would be for up to another year.
I found this turn of events intolerably unacceptable and reached out to a couple of old family friends: (retired) Senator Norman Lamb and (now retired) Senator Ed Long. They both explained that in order for them to investigate the issue, they needed a signed Privacy Act Consent Form. Since I was currently residing in Arizona at this time, they recommended I reach out to my state reps there.
I felt that since this battle began in Oklahoma with my son’s injury, I would go one better and contact all of my state reps, not only in Arizona where I was then currently residing, but Oklahoma as well. I created a form letter of introduction and made multiple copies of the PAC to be sent with the letter, then mailed them out.
By the time it was all said and done, I had 13 Senators and Congressmen looking into our VICP claim. Within a couple of months, I received word that my son’s case had been settled and we would be receiving our initial lump sum for past expenses by August of that year with monthly payments beginning one year from that day continuing for the life of my son. But first, I had to appeal to the courts to become a Conservator of my son’s estate to manage his affairs and, to ensure his medical care, I had to also become his Legal Guardian in the court of law.
At the time, our claim was reportedly the fastest to have been accepted as valid and yet took the longest to settle. Over three and a half years of waiting…. I have since heard from many families enduring the VICP process, their claims have taken far longer. This from a program established to make things easier for our vaccine injured children.
