Things at stake

When you're adopting, everything in life seems magnified.  Everything.  Maybe I'm just an anxiety-ridden crazywoman, but every little thing that goes wrong (or can go wrong) is met in my increasingly insane mind with "What will this do to the adoption?".  Some folks at Cory's work got laid off--what will this do to the adoption?  Will his employer fill out a form saying that he has long-term prospects when half the work force is gone?  A snowstorm hits Seattle--what will this do to the adoption?  Will the social worker not approve of the salt used on the sidewalk, or think the ice on the trees is a hazard, or will our power go out and make our condo seem a dank, dark and lonely place? So yeah, I'm a nut.

Saturday morning was crazymaking in the extreme.  Cory had his physical last week, and the China program requires a pretty extensive workup.  So we were just hanging out, drinking some joe and enjoying the beautiful snowy scenery from inside our warm little home, and the doctor called.  And told us that he needed to see Cory soon to go over his labs. 

No, it couldn't be done over the phone. 

It had to be in person. 

And the soonest appointment was Wednesday at 5.

Huh? 

We had no idea what to think.  Cory called back and just laid it out--we are stressed and very worried--and just exactly how worried should we be?  An in-person appointment can only mean something bad, right?  A complete metabolic panel is a lot of tests.  It could be anything.  But it's gotta be bad, right?  All they would tell him is that they needed to see him in person. 

That's gotta mean something bad, really bad, right?

In the end, no, it doesn't mean that at all.  As it turns out (oh, how I wish I had known this over the last 3 days!) if you have an HIV test, as required by the China program, medical offices are legally required to give those results to you in person, negative or positive.  They cannot call you with results.  They can't even mail them.  Maybe this is just in the state of Washington, but that's what was explained to us.  As our paperwork for China was completed and notarized today, they canceled his appointment and said that as long as he picked the results up in person when he was picking up the adoption paperwork, they would count that as an in-person appointment.

Maybe tonight we will sleep.  And maybe I won't have recurring dreams that Cory is lost and I can't find him.

Getting a call like that is really, really scary.  Super, duper terrifying. 

The interesting thing to me is that right after the call came in, Cory turned to me and said, "What will this do to the adoption?"  Not "What is wrong?" or "Is it serious?" or "I'm so worried" but again, the ever-present worry in the back of our minds at all times--what will this do to the adoption? Years and years of working toward the goal of a family will do that to you, I guess.  It feels like every single little thing can potentially derail our dreams; maybe they've been derailed so many times we don't know any different.  I look forward to the day when a snowstorm is just a snowstorm. The day when a layoff is scary but won't mean we will never have children (how can those two things even possibly equate each other?).  When we aren't, in essence, asking (begging?) others (employers, doctors, social workers) for permission to build our family.

Relief, sweet relief.  But tomorrow will bring something else (hopefully not as dramatic!!) that will have us asking the ever-present question:  what will this do to the adoption?