What makes you think I’m frustrated?

Raising a child with special needs is challenging, but battling the ineptitude and insanity of government bureaucracy and endless paperwork is true torture, a double whammy. Listen to the outgoing voicemail message of my daughter’s assigned Medicaid representative when I called her for the second time:

“Hello, this is Mrs. So and So, and I'm not available right now. If you’ve already left a message for me, please don’t leave another one. All you’ll do is fill up my mailbox, and I won’t get back to you any sooner!”

Then a beep. Then a recording: “This mailbox is full.”

Another day on the merry-go-round of madness.

Tomorrow comes and I’m harangued by the medical insurance customer service representative who refuses to speak with me about a billing question because my daughter is an adult with privacy rights.

While they won’t talk to me without permission from my intellectually challenged daughter who has no idea what she is giving permission for, they will cash my checks pronto, no questions asked.

Usual and customary procedures might work for most, but not for my daughter and others who are not usual and customary.

Families like mine are hit with a tsunami of government, health care, school, and agency paperwork. But unlike tsunamis, paperwork never ebbs.

Hordes of government employees have jobs pushing paper and presumably preventing fraud. We’ve been guilty several times for paperwork errors, once for failing to include the middle initial of my daughter’s physician (shame on us), and another time because someone did not like my signature (bad mommy).

Sure, I’ve got lots of time on my hands to redo several months of daily forms, rewriting my signature 100 times to reflect my proper first name, Cynthia, instead of the short form “C.” Call me criminal.

Can I jump through any more hoops for you today? Or, should I just wait until tomorrow?

From my perspective, this practice of looking for trouble is not the best use of taxpayer dollars.

I have a lot of patience, really I do, but none for dizzying nonsense. I'm saving my patience for my special-needs child.