It’s been a promising few days around these parts.
The adoption worker (let’s call him Andrew) was supposed to take a look at our home study on Tuesday when he got back into the office.
Tuesday afternoon I got an e-mail from our worker, J, who said that she’d received a voicemail from Andrew. He’d reviewed our home study and had a couple of questions, so he’d requested our entire file from the state office, but wanted to let J know that he was still pursuing us for Smiley.
I saw that as a very good sign – that he hadn’t seen anything thus far that was a big red flag for him.
I was also immediately concerned that they wouldn’t be able to find our file. That had happened once before. Someone had “checked it out”, hadn’t returned it, and it took awhile to track it down.
The file WAS located and put in Andrew's mailbox at the state office on Thursday. He was going to request that it be mailed to him but if that didn’t happen, he would pick it up when he was in the office on Tuesday, the 26th.)
Yesterday morning, I was driving my mother-in-law to see O’s uncle who is in the hospital a couple of hours from our home, and my phone rang. It was Andrew. I pulled over the first place I could find, and sat and talked to him for probably 20 minutes. He had a couple of questions that I was able to answer for him.
The first was if we’d had updated physicals. Ours in our file are expired. I told him we’d done that in November and that J had our paperwork. (It was sent to him yesterday afternoon.)
The other one was about my episoded with Reg***lan a couple of years or so ago. He asked if I minded telling him more about that. I told him I’d be happy to. I explained that I’d been put on Reg*lan for some problems I was having with reflux – that it was a medication designed to speed digestion. I told him that within a few days I was in the ER with paralyzing anxiety and was fortunate enough that the ER physician recognized the problem and immediately took me off the drug. I explained that even after I stopped the medication, I was still dealing with a lot of anxiety and immediately decided to go to a psychiatrist instead of letting my family doctor (who put me on Reg*lan in the first place and didn’t recognize the problem) treat me. I told him about the psychiatrist saying that Reg#lan was an evil drug that should be removed from the market – that he’d had a lot of patients have complete mental breakdowns on the drug and that I would have undoubtedly been one of those people. I explained that once the psychiatrist put me on something to treat the anxiety, it was a few-month process to wean me off, and that I hadn’t had any problems with anxiety or depression before or since that time. He seemed appreciative of my honesty and said he’d needed to ask because, of course, adding a child to our home would bring a lot of stress and anxiety. I laughed and said that I didn’t have a problem with stress and anxiety – that I had a problem with Reg@lan. He promised that none of the kids he’d send us would bring me Reg&lan. We both laughed at that.
We talked about Smiley, his history and background, his current situation. We talked about the fact that there was no guarantee as to what behaviors/problems may emerge in the years to come, or on mental capacity, or if he’d be “college material”. I told him that that was the case with any child – biological or adopted – and that while we’d have dreams for whatever child we adopted, we also knew that our role was to give them the love, support, and opportunities to succeed in their life, whatever that looked like for them. He asked if we were able to travel for visits, and I told him we were – that O and I were always up for a road trip.
So basically this is where things stand. He is in the process of reviewing home studies to find a family he thinks would be a good candidate for Smiley. Once that happens (and let’s say it’s us), he will set up a meeting at the state office with J (who will go on our behalf), himself, Smiley’s caseworker, and two other adoption workers from around the state. They will review Smiley's case and our home study and if they feel it is a good match, they will offer to let us adopt Smiley. If we accept, we will begin visits and start transitioning him to our home.
I feel really good about our conversation. I liked Andrew and he seemed to like me too. I very much wish I hadn’t been parked on the side of the road, with my MIL listening to every single word, but all in all I think it went well.
So, we go back to waiting some more. We’re starting to play with fire, though, talking about what we’d want to do if we got to bring Smiley home – paint and redecorate his room and ask our next door neighbor to build a swingset.
DANGEROUS area – chock full of potential heartache – but here we are once again. I wouldn't have it any other way.
