Preparation

Preparation

The journey continues

Jeff ended up not having a problem with our traveling quickly after I showed him pictures and explained how terrible life is in most orphanages. Telling him we needed to get her as quickly as possible so she could have a real home and family.

Paperwork for an international adoption is daunting to say the least. There were things that seemed, at times, insurmountable but in the end I got everything together and sent off to Russia.

As the holidays approached and I thought constantly of the first time I would meet her, Russia had two separate shutdowns where they stopped issuing "databank release letters". These letters were necessary to get a court date and complete the adoption.

The first hold up happened in November but it was over very quickly. The second happened not long before Christmas and it lasted well into January. There were times I was afraid I would never get to go and meet our little girl.

During this time I discovered yet another potential problem. Russia had stopped re-accrediting agencies. Since sometime the year before, they decided that they needed a better way, in essence, to license out-of-country agencies and they would no longer renew anyone's license until they put together a committee to oversee the process.

Anyone working with an agency who had lost their accreditation had to do extra paperwork and travel as an independent. Some regions would not even let adoptions continue leaving some families in the middle of the process, not knowing when they would be able to bring their child home.

Our agency still had its accreditation until the end of February so it became a race against time to get us there, meet her and sign an acceptance letter before they wouldn't let us travel at all.

Because of the shut down in Russia we could not travel during the holidays as expected. January rolled around and while I was waiting I began corresponding with a lady named Cathy who was adopting a little boy through our agency who was also at the same orphanage as Katya.

We became friends as we wrote back and forth, making plans and getting excited together about meeting our kids.

During this time Jeff had been sick for a couple of weeks on and off. First a cold, then a fever, then he developed chest pain. We attributed it to a chest cold and overlooked the fact that it was getting slowly worse.

About 2 weeks after the pain started while we were at the Honda dealer trading in our van, he sat down in a chair and said we better get him to the hospital.

After many hours and many tests in the hospital they discovered that despite the fact he no heart disease anywhere, a piece of plaque (which we all have to some degree) had broken off, something which happens from time to time and had become lodged in his left descending coronary artery. It was 99% blocked, developing a clot and the doctor didn't know how he had not had a major heart attack as the lower section of his heart had already stopped beating.

Jeff spent 4 days in the hospital, 3 of those days in the cardiac care unit. It was a complete blur for all of us. In the back of mind I began to wonder if we would be able to go to Russia at all now. We knew we had to get there within the next 4 weeks and I had no idea whether the doctor would let Jeff travel.

I felt selfish to even be thinking of that when he had just been through a life threatening experience. It turned out though that he was thinking about it as well. His nurse pulled me aside one day and told me he kept telling them he had to be OK because he needed to go to Russia and get his little girl.

As it turned out the doctor didn't see any reason to restrict travel. He said the rest of Jeff's heart was in near perfect condition and he should be fine without worry that it would happen again.

So Jeff came home and we began preparation in earnest for our trip. 10 days later Jeff's mom called. His father had had a massive stroke and was in the hospital in a coma.

We waited through the weekend and it was obvious that things with his dad were not going to get better. Jeff booked a last minute flight and flew to Vegas for 24 hours to be with his mom.

He came home and said things didn't look good but there was nothing we could do and his mom was insistent that we not postpone our trip.

We reluctantly agreed and within a week we on our way to St Petersburg to meet our little girl.