Virginia Williams: Hi, I'm Virginia Williams. I live in Bluefield, West Virginia. I have an 11-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son, and I'm currently a home visitor, so I work with prenatal families and children up to age 3. I currently have Medicaid for both of my children. Sadly, I lost my Medicaid due to how we file. So, luckily they were able to keep it. With me not having Medicaid, I have definitely skipped a lot of preventive appointments, appointments I Honestly should have gone to, as far as my children with their Medicaid, I do make sure they keep their regular appointments with their primary care physician, even if we do have longer wait times there. As far as a dentist though, once we got them in, have definitely kept their appointment every 6 months because I know the waitlist for a dentist in this area that takes Medicaid is very long, and so it can take a long time to get in there. Having children with a need for any kind of Specialist in this area is very difficult because there is very limited access. When my daughter was very little, she suffered from seizures, and we were not equipped in this area, and she was sent to Morgantown for appointments. We would have to travel 4 hours out of the way, go up to Morgantown for a quick appointment, and then drive 4 hours back, or we would have to stay the night if it was early in the morning, things like that. When she had Her tubes and adenoids, when she had a lot of issues with her ears, we had to go to Charleston. So a 2 to 2.5 hour drive for a 15 to 30 minute appointment and then 2.5 hours back. It got very difficult at times, and I've seen myself working with families now that they're Having these issues. We might have an ENT close by, but for things like endocrinologists, for seizures, for anything like that, they're going to Morgantown, Huntington, Charleston. We don't have the access here that we need to take care of all these specialized treatments for these babies.
