[Purdue]

Well, we received our call yesterday for 2 refferals!! A 2 yr old girl and a 3 1/2 yr old boy. We are so excited, yet scared to death. We received the pix and all looked good visually, to us. We also received the med reports for them both (they are unrelated but in the same region). There were items on the med report that we could understand and relate to (urinary tract infections, ear infections, flat feet, etc.). But, there were also some REALLY big words on there that we didn't know. We have sent all the info to the Dr.'s we lined up so hopefully they won't take too long since its a holiday weekend. Anyway, we looked up some of the terms online last night and it made us nervous. Can anyone tell me if the med records you received were accurate to your childs health? Do they blow a symptom out of proportion? Do they skirt an medical issue only for you to find out it was worse than they described? Or was it accurate? Just looking for feedback on the med docs versus your childs true health.

[DelMarie]

First of all let me say congratulations on your referrals of a girl & Boy. Sorry if this is long winded. I have been a lurker on this board and love to get the chance to talk about our adoption!

Not adopting two children is the one regret that my husband and i have as we agonized over the decision to go for one or two children. We have a little girl who is now 5 years old-adopted from Krasnodar in June 2005.

We recieved her referral when she was 5 months old and due to shut down of the MOE we didn't get to pick her up until she was 16 months old.
She had a VERY SCARY medical report. Her report stated she had low apgar scores of 4-5 at birth, she had cerebal palsy, torticollis, hypotonicity of the lower extremities, and as you stated some other big words that I couldn't make sense of. I have been a nurse for 20 plus years and couldn't even find these types of definitions with my resources at our medical library at my place of employment.
ALL in all though-we fell in love with her photo and we were told to take a day or two to decide. We got a phone call about 2 days later from our case worker who said we could "split the cost" because another family in neighborhing Noverynsk was paying for a american medical doctor to travel from St Petersburg Russia where there was an american clinic. The cost would be 1,000 dollars. we didn't think twice about spending the additional money-we thought it would give us piece of mind.
Our daughter did not have cerebal palsy. She was very low in weight and her head was a bit larger-concern about the head circumfrence but ultimately, she is now a healthy, spunky, 5 year old. I am unsure if she ever did have apgar scores that low or not? Some of the medical terminollogy on her record I felt may definetly have been exagerated but you can never be sure?
We were very scared about what her ultimate "special needs" would be. Her "special need" really turned out to be emotional rather than physical. She was 16 lbs @ 16 months when we picked her up. The doc at the embassy said she was in bad shape and diagnosed her with failure to thrive. She was pale, fragile, anemic, definetly had a flat affect-no smile, no crying, no vocalizing, etc....These were all I am sure from no stimulation in her environment.

Your decision to accept or turn down a referal(s) also is ultimately a leep of faith that God will provide you children who will "eventually" be well in body and spirit. W
e had some difficulties bonding and the first 6 months were hell on me emotionally-even though I thought I was prepared.

She was meant to be ours and I can't imagine life without her! In june she will have been with us 5 years and I don't know where the time has flown. We were married 19 years before she came along so quite a life change for a 40 something couple! Boy-how dull our lives were before.
I guess only you can decide if they are a match for you-sorry I don't have more "sound" advice to offer. If you have the opportunity for an in country evaluation that would definetly be a benefit.

Good luck and blessings in building your family.

[kretzklan]

Don't be too concerned until you speak to the docs. Nearly everything on my kids meds was false. No allergies (numerous listed), the sever scoliosis is a 5% curvature (which we all nearly have)...so, yes, they often put things down to 'show' why the child would be turned down by Russian families. Good luck and congrats!

[k8c]

The Russian healthcare system works differently, almost in the opposite way, from ours in the US. Here you are assumed to be healthy unless a problem surfaces. In Russia, you must prove that you are healthy. There are some very scary diagonses that are on nearly every baby's medical record (encephalitis). But, Russians believe you outgrow these.

I was just reading a site about Russian orphans (in Russian, for Russian AP's) and it was talking about a little girl who had CP but had outgrown it and was now perfectly healthy. Obviously, that is not a condition that we would say you could outgrow!

Karen's links lets you search terms that often show up on Russian medical records.

Don' t be worried. Enjoy the excitement!
Kate

[GCS]

Congrats on your referrals! If you are using a good IA doctor, they will know how to decode much of the medical info presented to you. You can also go to Karensadoptionlinks.com and look under general info for medical. There is a list there I believe that talks about terms that show up on these reports often. Its a good resource.

For us the reports on both of our children were incorrect. The only thing we found to be useful and accurate on their medicals was their innoculation history. We did titers on them when we came home and the blood work showed that they were as current as stated in the paperwork.

All the best!

[jeannecr]

How exciting! Hope it all goes smoothly from here on out.

[votemom]

i'm really excited for you - your process is going really fast!!

we adopted two unrelated and it was the perfect decision for us. we brought them home at age 23 months. it's tough at first (and now mostly a blur), but the joy far outweighs the challenges.

do you have other kids already?

going from zero kids to two kids will be a huge adjustment, but there are many parents here who have done it and will be a great support.

again - congrats!

p.s. they told us to BE SURE not to give our girls ANYTHING with SUGAR because they were both allergic and would break out in a rash on their knees if they had sugar. ummm... no.

[MamaChinch]

First of all, congrats on your referrals, simply wonderful news!! Second, ditto what others have said, wait until you hear back from your IA doc. MY dd had some diganosis' that turned out to be nothing, found out once home and a few specialist's visits later! There is typical medical language Russians use that means nothing more than the child was born.
But you do need to rule out anything you are not prepared to handle.
Sounds like you are dong the right things! Good luck!

[angelkisses0102]

Congrats on the referrals...here's a great old thread that may help Typical med diagnoses..for those waiting.... Maybe some of us can go back and update even further...but this thread will give you lots of informatin.

Good luck!

[amyfk]

Congratulations to you on the referrals! IF you didnt have mixed emotions I would have to wonder, it just means you are NORMAL. I hope you have a good IA doctor lined up a good IA doctor with lots of experience can really help to alleviate your fears about the medicals.
Please keep us posted,
Amy K, NJ

[Pinkie]

Congratulations on your referrals . I hope the doctor report is positive and you don't have to wait too long with the holidays!

[MenloAve]

First congratulations on your referral. We travel tomorrow to go meet a little girl so I'm doing my last minute printing of "what to ask the orphanage director questions."

I've faced your decision now three times, and it always seems so scary and I'm not so sure we did a great job at this at first. In Ukraine we received a blind referral and no picture. Turns out the child had severe FAS. Second time in Poland with information that seemed out of whack with the information being presented. Medical information was much worse when we were there. I mentioned we are traveling tomorrow to meet another little girl. This is it for us - my husband won't do it again so I keep praying that this is right.

I look back on those two experiences and wonder what did we do wrong. First in Ukraine, we didn't have a choice, go see this girl or go home without trying. That was just us getting caught up in a political mess that hasn't worked itself out yet. Nothing we really could have done here. (It is important to note that another family had already traveled to see her and said no.)

The other experience - well we knew something was "out of whack" and deep down we knew it wasn't going to work. But we didn't want to say no to a little girl without giving it a chance and researching it further. While in Poland we found out that two other couples had already traveled to see her and said no. Truthfully, in this case noone felt they were lying. There seemed to be a refusal to believe very serious issues the fostermom was seeing. To do this one over again we should have trusted our instinct and said no upfront.

I have also learned to ask if we are the first people to receive the referral. There are several people on this board who have written about accepting a referral that someone else has turned down and how great it turned out to be. From what I have surmised, these are turned down referrals that don't include travel. That said, there is always a difference in what people feel they can reasonably knowingly accept so use this information as a data point only, just as you would head circumference. However, if someone has traveled to see the child - you can be reasonably sure they went on the same information you have, and then turned the referral down (you know they found out additional information that they couldn't accept.)

Worst of all our 5 year old son was devastated. He met both little girls and just wants a little sister. He surmised that they didn't want to join our family and it must be him. We travel tomorrow for another referral and our son isn't coming this time. He wants to go once she has decided to join our family. This time I evaluated the referral differently.

So this time I asked upfront about whether we were the first ones to receive the referral. I asked for updated measurements. Now these measurements seemed out of whack and our IA doctor was very, very concerned about small head size. So I asked them to go back and do the measurements again and not to round them. I did have to say that my husband was going to turn down the referral if we didn't get the info and I didn't want to. Because of our history, someone went out to meet the girl, redid the measurements, and spent an hour with her. They also sent us the more detailed Hague requirements medical information. We got new pictures from the visit, new measurements which (if accurate made much more sense.) I took the information to another pediatrician to get a second opinion. My mom is a young child developer so she took the information we had and evaluated how severe the delays are - taking into consideration the formula of 1 month delay for every three months in an orphanage. We were looking very specifically at FAS (without the typical facial features) and impact of small head size. I've talked to people that adopted from this orphanage in the past and how accurate the diagnosis were and how good the care was. Now, I feel like I'm pressing the limits of what they normally do for families and they are doing this because of our past experiences, so I have no idea if most people ask for this much extra information and if they get it (I really am very curious about this.)

I posted somewhere else that I feel like I'm getting ready to jump off a cliff and I hope that the person I paid to pack the parachute did a good job and that I can figure out how to land it when the time comes. My husband said that this feels more like the type of referral we had expected. There are unknowns as there always are, but they seem to conform a bit more to what we are knowingly ready to accept.

So I have to end with the same comment I've read over and over on these boards. Trust your instinct, ask for additional information, use an IA doctor but don't be afraid to get a second opinion, understand what you can knowingly accept or how much risk you are willing to take. Good luck and I hope you are happy with the outcome.

[Purdue]

Thank you to everyone that posted. All this information really helped. As a followup, we accepted one of the children, but not the other. It is heartbreaking. My dh, just last night said he thought this was the hardest thing he's ever had to do, say no to a child. Our agency is working with Russia for a 2nd referral in the region. Hopefully they will work quickly since there is a child that has been accepted waiting in the wings. No plans yet to travel until they come back to us if there is another child available. Not sure what will happen if there is not...guess we'll wait and see.

[TweetyMom04]

We too made the mistake of looking on line to see what the big medical terms meant. Russians believe that you are born very, very sick and you grow into a healthy person. Thus the medicals written read as if the child dying. We 'held our breath' until all 3 of the Specialist Doctors returned their findings to us. Their findings versus the Russian terminology was off, but not by much.

Our medicals were accurate in one area with one of our Sons. He was treated with medicine and was given the 'all clear.' His Brother was tested for one of the conditions listed, but nothing came of it.

Be prepared that you may not accept a referral based upon various reasons. It will be one of the hardest decisions and heart-breaking.... as you know. ((HUGS)) But your agency will contact you with another refferal and hopefully in the same region.

Hang in there.

[Purdue]

Well, we received our 2nd referral call yesterday! And only after 6 days (including a weekend) from when we accepted 1 of the 2 referrals! We have sent the information to the Dr's so we'll see what they have to say. After the roller coaster ride last week, I don't want to get my hopes up too much.

I told my family yesterday about the referral but my DH said he didn't want to tell his family yet. Said he didn't want to tell them this time until we were sure to accept both children. I understand and am ok with it. His mom is a nurse, so when she told him about the 1st referrals and all the "big words" she went into nursing-mode rather than mom-mode and scared the crap out of him. She meant no harm but obviously her perspective is US medicine and experience. She later realized what she did and apologized to him...she thought she was helping.

So, we are now waiting for the Dr.'s results