We're Still Alive!

Well, I did not intend to take a six week break from posting. But we just spent four totally insane weeks in the States doing medical/immigration stuff, and the blog just did not happen. It's kind of a miracle we're all still sane after that actually.

So, over the next few weeks, I'll tell you more about what we did while we were Stateside and share more about M's kindergarten graduation, which happened the day before we left and share about our vacation in Seoul on the way back to Asia. For now, I'll just talk a little about the reality of having a child with a complex medical history.

First of all, once you're in the world of complex medical conditions, which we didn't know anything at all about six months ago, once you're in that category, you realize REALLY fast that G is on the very light end of the scale. Sure, he's got issues, but his issues do not affect his intellect and are all correctable with surgery. I mean, surgery is extremely stressful to watch your child go through. But really there are a lot of kids out there with debilitating issues that they will just deal with their whole lives. That's really not what we're talking about here. So although this would've all sounded crazy to me back when I only had "normal" children, one day in a children's hospital will give you the perspective you need to realize that this is not that crazy.

So, G had A LOT of appointments. I mean, there were the immigration appointments, which we knew about. And we had scheduled nine medical appointments already when we left to go back, which seemed like a lot to us. But once we got there, we realized that all of those appointments required tests to be run (which required another appointment) and then they required follow-ups. So, in the thirty days we were there, G had 19 medical appointments and 3 outpatient surgeries. The main thing we learned from all of those is that G does NOT have a lot of issues he could have had! The specific congential defects he was born with tend to occur with some other defects and we were mainly doing all those appointments to check for those other issues. And the good news is that he seems like he has none of them! We also got a few minor things taken care of with the outpatient surgeries, and the result is that he is eating WAY better and his eyes are aligned now! So, if we lived in the States, all of that stuff would have been spread out over a much longer period than one month, but now that it's all done and we are home, we are so, so, so, so grateful that he doesn't have extra issues and that the small things are taken care of.

We did find out that he needs a "small" repair done to one of the surgeries he had at birth, so we're planning to do that this winter. That's not an outpatient surgery. But by then, he'll (hopefully) be a lot bigger and he'll have been home nearly twice as long as he has been now. So, it's going to be challenging, but he should be in a much better place to handle it than he really has ever been before in his life. We are exhausted from the past month, but we are grateful for so many things: so much good news, so many questions answered, some things already taken care of, excellent medical care and the prospect of a really high quality surgery a few months from now. There were a lot of meltdowns during our month of crazy in the States, but there is so much to be grateful for!