What a day! We knew we were meeting with doctors today at 4PM to review the file we received on Monday night. We both felt pretty positive this morning that this was our girl. We knew we had until 9PM tonight to have our decision back to our agency (72 hour review period).
Fast forward to about 12:30PM. We receive an email back from our adoption agency contact in China with answers to questions we had asked on Tuesday. This is great I am thinking, we really didn't expect answers back before we had to make a decision by 9PM. I opened the email at work and my heart just sank. The one need we were worried about looked to be confirmed as something severe and even worse something progressive. I forward the email to Jacob who is sleeping and does not see it until 3PM. I feel like we are going to have to say no to this child. I even write a draft post for our blog with a picture of a broken heart. I try to concentrate at work...notice I said try.
Jacob wakes up reads the email and responds back to me. Like me he feels like this need is not right for us. We are both sad and mad. We are both frustrated that the last 5-6 files we have reviewed have had needs that are much more severe than what is listed, that are buried in medical information, that get our hopes up only to have to say no once we read and hear the full medical details.
4PM rolls around and we get our call from our IA doctor. We are expecting much concern over this need and at this point we are both preparing ourselves to say no to this little girl. We have used this doctor to review several other referrals by now and he does not gloss over issues and often shows us risks from his medical reviews that we do not pick up on. After exchanging hellos he immediately starts the conversation with "I feel pretty positive about this one". Ah, but he has not seen the email from this morning. We ask him to read it. He reads and is not alarmed, is not concerned. What...there is hope again? He continues his review and walks us through step by step of the need we are now terrified of. He is still not concerned and answers all our questions. What we thought was a deal breaker is not and the need is likely not how it is translated in her medical file. The other two needs in her file are fully resolved and in all likelihood will not require any medical attention (we mostly expected that).
I really cannot believe it at this point. He gives us some follow up questions to ask China, but we will have to make our decision without those last final reassurances because of the deadline. He is completely comfortable with us moving forward and gives us a low risk final review.
We hang up. I call Jacob. We are both in disbelief...we have hope again. We discuss and agree we both feel positive and both want to move forward. We complete our Letter of Intent (LOI) and send to our agency. It's 4:30PM. This is our official letter to China requesting permission to adopt this little girl!
We call our agency to let them know we are proceeding, with the caveat that we have additional questions we need answered to confirm this little girl does not have a severe progressive special need. We are pretty confident she does not. Our agency is fully supportive, they were also surprised by the information in the email this morning. They assure us that we can move forward, if any information comes back that should cause us to change our mind, we can stop the progress for this girl (really don't want to even think what that would feel like).
So..we ended the day where we began...we are moving forward. We will have a daughter!
Still a bit anxious about receiving those final medical answers. Trying not to becoming totally attached to the idea of this little girl in our family. Feeling 99% sure she will be our next addition. Need thoughts and prayers until we get these final answers.
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