Aadi

Age 4, North Carolina

Meet Aadi. Aadi has a smile that warms your heart and lights up a room. He was born 2 months premature and had a life threatening situation occur at birth. The medical team was able to save his life, but he had an hypoxic brain injury which led to severe cerebral palsy, periventricular leukomalacia, seizure disorder, legal blindness, and severe global developmental delay. Today, Aadi needs total care and full assistance with feeding, sitting, standing, and personal hygiene. He has frequent ear and respiratory infections and receives follow-up care from a neurologist.

Aadi was recently accepted into North Carolina’s Medicaid waiver program and will now have access to vital medical services his family’s employer-based health insurance didn’t cover, like a nurse aide. Aadi’s father Dipendra says: “Just having employer sponsored private health insurance is not enough to cover the medical bills incurred during care of a medically fragile child. Cuts in Medicaid mean Aadi could be denied healthcare access, and could even mean the waiver program going away. I can’t even imagine the horrible situation that Aadi and many other medically fragile kids could face. For the parents it will be a huge financial and economic constraint. Bottom line is that we will go broke and we will not be able to contribute to the economy as we try to take care of our child. It’s a lose-lose situation for everybody!”

Submitted by Dipendra, Aadi’s father