Our International Adoption Clinic appointment

Trying out a slide.

I wish I had video of Alex’s blood draw at the International Adoption Clinic at the University of Minnesota on Friday, but I had my hands full of kid at the time. They run a very slick operation up there—very professional and service-oriented. Anyway, they smartly put off the needles until the end of the appointment; as it was, Alex was already telling all the nurses and doctors, “Bye! Bye!” (His latest English word.) For the blood draw and TB poke, Alex sat in my lap. They had put numbing cream on both of his arms where they thought they might poke him, but for some reason the technician decided to take the blood from a spot on his wrist. He sat in my lap, the tech did his thing with assistance from a couple of nurses; Susan helped to hold one arm and reassure him, and another staff member was there solely to distract him with an iPad and various light-up toys. So here we have maybe six adults hovering over him, and this big scary needle coming at him, and my role is to hug him and offer reassuring words in my bad Russian, to wit: “This will hurt you a little bit.” Ha ha, I’m amazed he believed me with all the fuss, but aside from flinching and briefly crying out, he did just fine on both pokes.

The rest of the IAC appointment was extremely informative. We saw a pediatrician who specializes in seeing adopted children from Eastern Europe, and a physical therapist, and a psychologist—again, specializing in international adoptions from orphanages. The psychologist spoke Russian (she is from there), and we had an interpreter as well.

I think for the most part I will draw the veil of privacy across the details of the visit—feel free to ask if you see us, but we’ll keep most of it offline. The summarized version is that we learned a lot more about his cerebral palsy, as well as some home therapy options and possible medical interventions. We also learned a lot more about his medical condition, including a couple major pieces we didn’t know before. One sad piece was that one rib cage is somewhat deformed from him lying on that side of his body so much—another testament to a life spent largely in cribs. On the other hand, a good piece of news is that he has gained more than a pound in the couple weeks since his arrival home...not too bad, considering his starting weight of 25 pounds.

One significant piece of news to come out of our meeting with the psychologist was that she strongly recommends that Alex not begin school this year. We will be consulting with the relevant people at Alex’s school to see what they think about that, but she had three main reasons for her recommendation, all of which make sense to me. First, Alex needs more time to attach and to psychologically adjust to his new situation—being active most of the day, as opposed to mostly passive. Second, he needs to concentrate heavily on physical and occupational therapy. The physical therapist said there is lots of room for him to improve, but it’s going to take some work, and that will be his main task in the coming months. (We are already seeing significant improvement in his ability to support his head—he has been getting lots of exercise in holding his head up.) Third, he is so developmentally delayed that there’s not much that he would learn at school that he wouldn’t learn at home. He should be capable of reading and writing but his pre-literacy skills are virtually nonexistent, even such basics as recognizing that printed words correspond to spoken words.

Keeping him home was not in the master plan around here. He was supposed to go to school while his toddler brother stayed home. How exactly I am going to manage care for Alex and his brother on my own is frankly beyond me. We’re frantically doing paperwork to try to get support services in place, but bureaucracies grind slowly, so getting things in place by the beginning of the school year is probably unrealistic. Between now and September, it looks like our summer will be filled with paperwork and medical appointments.

Here are some more pictures of Alex:

Hanging out with grandma.

On the merry-go-round.

Yet another swing!

With our friend and Russian teacher. Notice he's got a water bottle--he can drink
from that just fine, and is getting better with a cup.