Will's surgery

We finally got some word from the adoption agency! I compulsively check my e-mail everyday, just hoping for some tidbit of information. Anything, good or bad, I just want to know as much as I can about this precious little guy that we are calling "ours". Will had his first open heart surgery, and is now back in the orphanage and recovering nicely. We received a HUGE medical report, and have sent it on to our pediatric cardiologist. He and I are meeting next Friday to go over it, and he will explain things more in terms that I can understand. But the bottom line is that Will is doing great, all things considered! The one really scary thing in his report is that his left kidney is severely enlarged, and is not functioning well. I know that people can live with one kidney, but the question remains whether or not he will have to have another surgery to remove that kidney. If it is not causing any noticeable problems, there is no reason to remove it. But we just don't know right now. We are waiting for some lab work results to come back, so the doctor can get a better idea of what is going on and explain it all to us. And some really good news.....the agency is sending us a video of Will!!!! I absolutely can't wait to see it! To me, the thought of seeing this video, of seeing our little angel in action carries the same feelings as the first ultrasound I had with each of my girls. I remember the feeling of awe, when you knew all along that there was a real, live baby in there, but seeing it actually moving just changed my perspective, each and every time. And I that is how I feel now. I have the same anticipation, since all that we have to go on right now is an outdated picture.....it's from 4 months ago, and you know how babies change! I can't wait to see him smile, to see him move around and focus on people. I just need this so badly, to help convince myself that he is going to be okay. It breaks my heart to think of this poor baby going to a huge hospital in a strange city to have his chest cut open, with nobody there who loves him; nobody to hold him and tell him that it would all be okay, that the pain will not last forever. But that is what Will has been through already in his young life, and the one thing that I just keep telling myself is that he is so young that he will never remember this. He's only 8 months old.....and I just wish that I could say for sure that we would have him home before his first birthday, that he will be home at an age where he never remembers not living with us. And I wonder if we will ever get to the point, like we did with our girls, that we can't really remember life without him. We are still waiting on one last piece of paperwork for our dossier to be done. When that is completed, I will feel like we can finally relax. There was a mix up with some paperwork from New York State, so I had to send another request for some documents to them. I sent it all overnight, with postage-paid return envelopes to have it over-nighted back. So hopefully, it will be done in a few days. They'd better not lose it this time! It frustrates me so much that government officials either can't, or don't want to, see how their red tape and beaurocracy is affecting the life of this sick little boy. If I could just call each and every person who stood in the way of us getting our baby sooner rather than later, I would, and I would show them his picture, and tell them what he has been through and what he still has to endure, and beg them to drop whatever they are doing right this minute, and sign off on this paperwork so that we can bring him home NOW. But then I know that even if I could do that for this one boy, there are still millions more out there just like him, and that the rules are there for a reason, and I just have to be patient. Sometimes though, I just want to stamp my foot like my two year old would do, and demand to be given what I want, "right now"! Oh well, I will try to just stay busy and work with the system, not against it. In the meantime, we are getting Will's room ready, preparing the girls for the fact that they will be getting a brother and that Mommy and Daddy will be going away for a week to get him, and that life in the Morgan house is going to get even more hectic than usual for a while. I will post more when I get the video and/or some more updates. Until then, I will try to stay sane!

Dossier Almost completed

Well, it's been quite a while since I have posted anything, and a LOT has happened since then. Life has been too busy to get on here much. Let me go back to where I left off last, waiting to hear if our application would be approved. It was! Actually, it was approved and in the same e-mail, the agency asked us to take a look at a little boy who has several very serious heart defects. We immediately knew that we could not turn him down. However, another family, one further along in the process than us, came forward and said they would take him. So, we figured that God's will would be done no matter what, and this must not be the baby for us. Well, fast forward several months.....it is now August, and about a month ago, we received an e-mail from the agency saying that this same little boy, who's name is Omkar, is available for us again. The other family decided not to take him.....we aren't sure what took them so long to come to that decision, but we'll take it as a sign from God and run with it! We immediately filled out our i800a paperwork and sent it in, and then started the tedious journey that one must go on to complete a dossier. I have NEVER in my life had to provide that much paperwork for anything! It's been a hectic month of paper-gathering and letter-writing, but as of today, we are waiting for the finalized home study to be sent our way (hopefully next week) and then we will be done! Last week, we sent copies of everything that we have to our adoption agency so they could forward it all to the orphanage in India....the orphanage was requiring some "proof" that we are really serious about this baby. We couldn't be more serious! We have named him Will, bought a dresser for his room, and he has a closet full of clothes. How much more serious would they like us to be?! Once the orphanage found out that Will really has parents, they called in a doctor to take a look at him. Our cardiologist told me after reviewing his medical record, and I quote, "they are letting this baby die." He has severe heart defects and is essentially withering away, and there was nothing being done about it. I was furious, scared, sad, and determined all at the same time. No way would we let that happen! Well, our God is amazing, and the orphanage took that information from our cardiologist and got a doc to look at him in India. They are flying him from Pune to Bangalore next week, and giving his heart a "temporary fix". He will receive a shunt, which will act as a straw to allow extra blood to flow through his heart/body. Right now, his oxygen sats are in the low 70's.....people can't live like that for long without having a stroke. The goal is to get him at least into the upper 80's, so he has a fighting chance while we push through all of this paperwork and red tape that we need to get done to get him home. Here is what's wrong with his heart, in the easiest terms I can tell you: He has a double outlet right ventricle, transposition of the great arteries, a large VSD, and pulmonary stenosis. All of this is very similar to a condition called Tetrology of Fallot. In a nutshell, his aorta and pulmonary valve are backwards, so the blood that is flowing to his body is not oxygenated. In addition to that, his pulmonary valve has been so damaged because of this defect that it is closing off, not allowing as much blood flow as normal. The VSD is simply a big hole in his heart, at the bottom between the left and right ventricles. Essentially, the VSD is keeping him alive, by allowing the oxygenated blood and unoxygenated blood to mingle, so that his body is at least getting some oxygen. We don't know his current weight, but we are guessing that he is also suffering from Failure to Thrive. A lot of cardiac babies have this problem, as do a lot of babies adopted from third world countries. So Will has a double whammy going against him, poor thing! This shunt that they are placing does require open heart surgery, but they will not need to put him on bypass (stop his heart) to do it. So, in terms of open heart surgeries, it is relatively uncomplicated. This should buy him anywhere from 6-12 months before he HAS to have his major heart repair, which we will get done here in Florida. He will be treated by the same doctors and at the same hospital that Juliette was treated at. We completely trust them, and appreciate all of their honesty over the past year and a half, both with Juliette and now with Will. At this point in the process, we are waiting for our Department of Homeland Security Immigration approval to come back, and we have to submit the completed dossier to India. The dossier is not a problem since we have the 30-something documents together (finally!) that are required. However, we have to wait on the government to do our big background check, and you know how government stuff goes sometimes! From there, when we get our approval, we will be given a travel time. (Probably about 4 months after our approval.) We are hoping that we can speed things up due to his health concerns, but we aren't sure yet how that will all work. We are just trusting God to do this in His timing.....we have to do that, or we will go crazy knowing that we have a baby out there who needs us, even more so than a "healthy" baby. So, at this point, we will consider it a real miracle if we are able to bring him home around New Year's, but our God is in the business of working miracles, so I don't think we would be surprised! We will keep everyone posted. Thanks for taking this journey with us!