Another encouraging step last night. I got a call back from a psychologist here in Washington who just so happens to specialize (really specialize, not pretend specialize.) in pediatric bipolar disorder. AND who is taking appointments for evaluations! In my search I came across the name of Dr. Stephanie Hlastala, who I called and left a message for on the off chance she was taking new patients. She called me back last night and gave me three separate appt. times that she could see Natasha in the next two weeks! Since we don't have insurance it's not going to be cheap because she does a three visit evaluation but I expected as much. Now we're getting somewhere!
I also got a call back from the clinician at the NIMH yesterday afternoon and we set up our time for the two hour phone interview. She'll be calling me on the 4th of April. So I'm now faced with the decision of whether or not I want to try and wait and see if the NIMH invites us to join the research study, on the opposite coast, providing every scan and test imaginable and the expertise of... experts, for free, or go with the specialist who is available immediately and who's office is 30 minutes from our house but will set us back a large (large to my current bank statement anyway,) sum of money. Or should I do both? What to do... what to do.
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