This week has been hard; much harder than the last four. A summary of our email and the forums shows that bringing home an orphan has become substantially more difficult in the last six months. It seems the international pressure against US adoption of foreign-born orphans has ramped up, causing the US posture to become especially fraud wary.
In their effort to thwart fraudulent adoptions, the US embassy has taken the position that "all adoptions are fraudulent until proven otherwise." That means the screeners at the embassy are requesting more documentation than previously; in some cases, documentation that doesn't exist. For example, in especially rural locations, there may be nothing that documents an uncle assuming responsibility for his nephew when both the child's parents have died. If that uncle subsequently relinquishes the child to an orphanage, the documentation typically begins with his "official" release to the orphanage, which could have taken place years after the death of the parents. The embassy demanding the finding of such non-existent documents has slowed down the process substantially.
At the same time, through a series of reports from our agency, we've discovered the doctors in ET have been treating Tommy with some medicines that make us a little nervous. Worse yet, through a series of communication challenges, although he's been on these medicines for several months, we've only now become aware of it. Treating a serious neurological condition like Tommy's can be very tricky. The medicines that are often used in neurology can be very useful, but they ALWAYS come with substantial risks.
Our biggest concern is that the doctors there, in an effort to get him better, introduce a therapy that creates a new hazard for Tommy's long term rehabilitation. We don't believe the medical staff in Ethiopia are bad (meaning either evil/mean or poorly trained), we just know that under THE BEST of circumstances, you have to watch out for side effects from neuro meds, and they can be affected by who manufactured the medicine, dosage and frequency of administration, the attention of the administrator, and MANY, MANY other issues. We just believe Ethiopia is not the place to start unproven or risky therapies. If such treatment is warranted, after Tommy's been evaluated and diagnosed here, by our high quality medical advisory team, with the best of today's technology and testing, then we can begin that therapy and monitor it closely. Most importantly, our team has the skill, experience and tools necessary to respond appropriately if a reactive problem develops.
It's as much a tracking and reporting issue as anything else. We want to be sure we're giving his American medical team as accurate and detailed a description of his treatment as possible, and the fact that we've had difficulty getting the truth indicates that making more changes at this point could complicate and stymie those efforts. For this reason, we've asked our agency to use their influence to intervene with the Ethiopian medical staff. We've asked them, if they can, to propose not starting any new chronic therapy before we return to bring Tommy home.
To be clear, we don't think the information was purposely hidden from us. We think it's more likely due to the infrequent and not timely medical reports, not-so-great communication between different medical personnel in ET, and mediocre documentation; all things we attribute to conditions on the ground, which we totally understand based on our in-person appraisal of what it's like to live and work in ET. So, we're not mad at anybody for this situation; it's just that now, more than ever before, we want to get over there and BRING TOMMY HOME NOW!
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