Haylie's File

Yesterday, we received our first child file to review. Greg couldn't get over how strange it feels to pick out a child for our family. I agree that it does feel weird. It would be much easier if God just plopped a child in our family and said "Here you go." Knowing we have to have the wisdom to know what child is right for our family, what type of disabilities we can deal with, and what our biological children can handle, is very overwhelming at times.

One of my many flaws is that I don't always first turn to God with problems or when big decisions have to be made. I tend to jump first and ask for guidance later. A child, especially one with special needs, is not something that I can take lightly though. Thankfully there has been much prayer before we started this process and I am trying hard to continue to take everything to the Lord before jumping headlong into a decision.

Anyway, back to the child file. There really is not much in the file to base our determination on. There is an old medical report that was done when she was 2(she is now 3 1/2), her medical report written all in Chinese, 11 pictures, and a small updated note from this month reporting her WBC count(elevated), height, weight, etc, and that she enjoys helping out with the babies in the orphanage. At the end of the note, someone wrote "By the way, she is very smart!" I thought that was cute.

A few red flags went up when I was trying to decipher the medical report. We knew about the cleft lip/palate and a small heart murmur so that was no surprise, but I noticed words like CHD, VSD, and ventricular septal defect. Now, I am not a medical professional by any means, but I have spent a lot of time working in a nursing facility so I have seen these things on medical paperwork before and they are never a good thing. I had a nurse at work look at the file and he was able to fill me in a bit. It sounds as though she has an issue with part of the middle of her heart bulging to one side and might need surgery to repair it. It also appears that she may have an aneurysm. She was not cleared by the cardiologist to have surgery on her cleft due to unknowns about her heart. What we don't know is if the heart repair is an easy surgery or if there is risk of death involved.

Thankfully, our adoption agency is not leaving us out to the wolves when it comes to the report. The social worker sent me a list of agencies in the US that can assist with the reports in the file. One of the physicians happens to be at Akron Children's Hospital right near us. The doctor is actually in Haiti until this weekend so I was able to schedule an appointment to review the file with the doctor next week.

While we wait for next Tuesday, I will start gathering documents to eventually go in our dossier.