Health Update

This is a big week for us around here and I decided today to share with you this part of our story.

 When we adopted Lily, she was under the "special needs" umbrella.  Almost all of the children for adoption from China are now "special needs".  With the one child policy now changed for many in China, that has not always been the case.  China also realized with previous years of adopting out numerous "healthy" children (many who were females), that they may be creating a gender imbalance so healthy girls were again desired for their society.   Many Chinese families make so little money and simply can not afford the care needed for a child with a disability which they must pay for up front.

Children in orphanages have various needs ranging from very, very minor to major medical needs.  Many disabilities considered a special need in China, we don't think much about at all in the United States because of the doctors and care we have available to us. These can be physical, mental or a combination of both.  Through questionnaires and discussions with our agency and doctors, we decided what type of needs would be a good fit for our family.  

One of the checklist we completed was several pages long and listed just about any and every condition you could imagine that someone may have.  We had to check yes, no or maybe to each disability.  So with our computer handy to look up some of these, we made our way through the list.  But saying no to certain conditions made us feel horrible in many ways because we weren't just saying no to a condition, we were saying no to any child with that need.  Our heartstrings were greatly pulled that evening as we sat at our dinging room table making those decisions for our family.

So that brings us to this little sweetie:

Lily has a congenital heart defect (meaning she was born with this) called Tetraology of Fallot.  Now before Lily, we knew nothing of this condition.  We know quite a bit now and I'm sure we will continue to learn more as we travel down this road with Lily.  Thanks to a dear friend (who is a pediatric cardiology nurse) for sending us some very special stethoscopes, the three of us can always hear how Lily's heart sounds.

This isn't a phone?!?!

Without going into a lot of details, we knew of her condition and knew she had open heart surgery when she was quite young.  We also knew we wanted to get her here as quick as possible to get her the best care possible.

Once we were home and began having her evaluated, we learned that she needs to have another surgery to help her heart.  The surgery done previously saved her, but wasn't totally complete.  The good news is that we are here with the best care for her and she won't go through this surgery alone as she did her previous one.  Her Mommy and Daddy will be there with her every step of the way.

Is that Dr. Wilson?  Love how she's watching her Daddy!

This is a big week for us because it's the week of surgery.  We are looking forward to having this behind us and getting back to our "normal".  

The three of us have a lot to see and do and plan to be busy as soon as she's healed.