It cuts deep...

Please don’t waste our time if you’re a blurker in for a quick skim. Do that with my last set of photos I posted instead. I don’t think you’ll get it unless you actually take the time to earnestly read this and I’m truly fine if you don’t.

Today I did a lot of thinking.
Inna, our coordinator, a few times, thought I was upset. But I wasn’t. That is too harsh a word, I was more ‘critically pensive’.
I was thinking about me, Christine, and the process, and much of our past thoughts that we’d expressed over the last few months to each other and to family and friends about Dennis and his condition.

I want to start this post with the sincerest of apologies to his birth mother, Strutska Taisia Mykolayivna. I know a lot of adopted children that thank their biological mothers for whatever circumstances that lead to their adoptive parents and I have faith same will prove true in this case.

Perhaps certainty is impossible (without the future genetic testing et al), but based on a long question and answer session with the English-speaking doctor here today, my time with Dennis thus far, and based on theories from California doctors, and my own personal research, I am convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that his condition is/was congenital. This doctor at medical center not only explicitly said this but also explicitly rejected even the possibility of the other leading theory.

I’m more than a bit embarrassed that I swallowed hook, line, and sinker the ‘tantalizing’ “born perfect then cut” story. Even the passport photographer asked the caretaker what happened to Denis and she, just yesterday, propagated again that ‘easy’ tale that I wish had never been told…

Come on people. Cuts or deep slices can happen. But they get stitched up and they heal. And they can leave ugly scars. But even with improper healing, they don’t cause half the issues this child has internally and externally. I can now rattle off a few of many named congenital “syndromes” that could plausibly explain my new son. But I won’t yet. I’m committed to discussing things with a greater confidence than I have been in the past and I hope we all will do same.

Again not upset or even accusing, just critically pensive again about if anyone ever thought the tale, when told, somehow makes Denis more sympathetic or adoptable???

In the spirit of integrity and truth, I’ll confess with plenty of shame, that that story had that effect on me! Maybe I didn’t want to adopt a “freak of nature”? Maybe birth defects like this were a bit out my league or out of my definition of “minor correctable” that I had thought we had on our home study?

But THANK GOD!

Thank God that He’s changed me (yet again). (I stopped crying and can resume typing now). Thank God that He gave me lots of time alone this week with Dennis to be a loving father. He hugs me back so sweetly and already forgives me (Dennis pats MY back!).

I expect and the doctor warned that we’ll have a rough road ahead with Dennis. But it sure beats the easy road without him. Thanks for reading. I wanted to get this off my chest. Nearly 2am here. I better go pat that raised bottom and get to sleep myself.