FERNDALE, Mich. – A Ferndale mom is warning other families after she says her 5-year-old son with a congenital condition was left without a wheelchair he needed for nine days.
5-year-old Aidan Dabish is getting around now in a pediatric wheelchair, but his mom says they had to wait over a week to get it and for it to be covered by insurance.
“This is a human being,” mom Jennifer Mannes said. “We need to bend policy to make sure that nobody is ever leaving the facility without a wheelchair.”
Dabish was born with isolated bilateral clubbed feet. He was diagnosed in utero.
Despite having two surgeries already, he’s still a free-spirited, Lego-loving kindergartener. He had to be taken out of school for 12 weeks as he prepares for his next surgery in mid-February.
Before that procedure, he and his team of doctors are working to atrophy the muscles in his legs. The process involves putting them in a series of casts from the groin to the toe.
That means Dabish, who was sprinting on the sidelines of the soccer field just a few weeks ago, will be moving on wheels ahead of the surgery and after.
“So we would borrow a little bit of tendon from this one, and bring it over to this one and vice versa,” Mannes said.
After he got his recent casts, which added 12 pounds to his body weight, his parents asked what the plan for a wheelchair was.
“I don’t even think they provided one for us,” she said. “I think his dad had to go and hunt it down.”
He got a standard adult-sized chair you often see at a hospital.
“When he leaned forward, it started to tip,” Mannes said.
His parents knew he needed something that would allow him to get around before and after the surgery. The hospital gave them a sheet of paper, sort of like a prescription.
“What we thought was we hand them the paper, they hand us the wheelchair, it’s a done deal,” Mannes said.
That wasn’t the case.
They were told they would either have to pay out of pocket or wait days for the insurance company to say they had enough proof that Dabish actually needs a custom wheelchair.
His mom says it should be a non-negotiable and that had she known this would be an obstacle, she would have started working on a solution months ago.
For nine long days, they played the waiting game.
“These are humans. These are not numbers. These are not cases - these are human beings and a lot of these are children,” Mannes said.
Dabish’s dad is insured through Blue Cross Blue Shield, and mom has Medicaid.
Local 4 reached out to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Medicaid for comment.
“We recommend members with questions about their benefits and what documentation may be required reach out to us proactively through customer service,” Blue Cross Blue Shield said. “We are ready to help clarify confusion for our members and provide guidance if necessary.”
Mannes says she wants to make sure no other family has to go through the same process.