Beaurocratic Red Tape

I Thought these Days were OVER... 

Yesterday we spent two hours in a too-warm, nondescript office getting absolutely nothing accomplished. 
24 years ago when the boys were born, B (my firstborn) suffered an Intraventricular Hemorrhage, Grade II.  It caused hydrocephalus during the time he was in the NICU, resulting in pools of blood in his tiny noggin, affecting his right side.  The doctors didn't know if he would be blind, if he would talk, walk or be able to learn.  But he was my baby and he was ALIVE.  That was all that mattered to me.
Fast forward to 1st grade.  He's walking, albeit with a pronounced limp but he is happy and healthy.  He has some trouble staying on task, so the doctor diagnoses ADD.  Okay, we can deal with that.  There are many medications out there that can help.  So he went on a series of medications, the side effects of each one worse than the last.  In 2nd or 3rd grade after vomiting every day exactly 2 hours after he took his pill, we decided it just wasn't worth it.  My son had ADD and that's the way he is.  If you can't deal with it, I'll find someone who can. 
Fast forward to age 14.  B was having severe pain in his right foot.  Dr. B at Children's Medical sent us for x-rays.  When he couldn't find the problem, we spent the next 6 months looking for a way to get into Shriners Hospital for Children for his foot to be examined.  We had a gait-study, more x-rays, and an MRI.  This is the point we found that he was actually diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy!!  Imagine, 14 years of not knowing your child had a major medical diagnosis!  So many things were explained by it.  Why had they not noticed during the countless Physical and Occupational therapy sessions he'd had since he was 6 months old?  (BTW, his foot problem was a structural problem.  The orthotics that had been used to help him walk had formed his arch extremely high.  His "little foot" as he calls it, was a size 10.5--the left is size 13.  With a new orthotic insert made by Shriners, he has been relatively pain free for 10 years.)  So the ADD that had caused him to have so much trouble in school was now blamed on the CP diagnosis also.  Years and years of evaluations and accommodations resulting in IEP's for every stage of life.  Finally, we were on the right track.  Whew!!
He did so well in the last 2 years of high school, he missed 4.0 by a couple of tenths of a point. He started college wanting to do it all on his own.  He wanted to leave that IEP in the past, and that's what he did.  He graduated from college with a Bachelor of Science in History and a minor in English.  Pretty big stuff for a tiny 28-weeker with terrible lungs who didn't walk until he was 2!!
This brings us to today.  B's right side does not function like the other side of his body.  It never will.  No fault of his own.  He has taken the GRE to enter graduate school twice now.  Both times, his typing has caught him--he cannot type without mistakes while in a hurry.  So what does a mom do?  Encourage and start investigating what might be done to help.  Wow, it turns out they do offer accomadations for the GRE.  Finding someone to sign off on them has proven futile, though.
The last 2 days we have spoken to multiple people of VRD (the specific entity that the GRE paperwork requests to sign off on) and they really have no idea who needs to do what.  All I know is that once again my child (yeah, so he's 23--so what?) is falling through the cracks of a system designed to help...but is doomed to failure because the system is broken.  Too many people play it, not needing any help in reality, and USE what was meant to help. 
So B will once again attempt the GRE at the end of January.  WIth no accomodations. But hopefully with a bit more studying of new GRE material, and a lot of prayer we will have a graduate student come fall, and he will finally, FINALLY feel like he is making a bit of headway in his life.  My sweet kid deserves it.