Children of Dreams, An Adoption Memoir (14 page)

One night Sylvia came by to drop off my mail. In the mail were more pictures of our referral from Vietnam. I opened it up with mixed feelings. I hope I am not replacing Manisha with this baby if she dies, I thought. It disturbed me. My feelings were as raw as a piece of uncooked meat. I knew God was in control but I had not surrendered my anxieties to the Great Physician and Healer.

Using the protocol that Jim and I found on the Internet, the doctors started Manisha on Albendazole treatment and waited along with us for the results of the MRI. Surgery for the time being was cancelled. God had answered my first prayer!

The MRI results came back as inconclusive. The doctors discharged Manisha and asked me to bring her back in a month for a CAT scan with contrast.

Happy to be discharged, the real battle had just begun. Joyce Meyer wrote a book called Battlefield of the Mind. The image in the title says it all as I was battling dragons and fears that stole every ounce of joy from my life. I was terrified of another seizure. Insecurity as a single mother sapped all my energy for living and made life overwhelming. The Prednisone Manisha took to reduce swelling created a feeling of isolation because it lowered her resistance to illness and we went through several bouts of unexplained fevers. Fevers increase the risk of seizures.

I was fearful for her to be around other kids that she might catch something. The Depakote they gave her for seizure control made her sleep all the time and she was difficult to arouse. The doctors switched her to Tegretol. Tegretol can cause liver damage so she had to have routine blood testing. I was afraid she would be one of the few to have a serious reaction.

By far the hardest thing to give to God was the “not knowing.” Were we giving Manisha the right treatment? If she had a brain tumor, by not doing surgery or giving her chemo, was it growing and could she mentally become like my dad? One morning when we were in the hospital, the chief resident in neurology gave me his opinion of what she had. He called it stage two astrocytoma. I dismissed it thinking what does he know? Not even the attendings would say, but it still upset me.

Well meaning friends came to me in the next few weeks and remarked, “I didn’t even recognize Manisha. She looks so different.” The comments hurt. One night we went to church and some of the kids were smirking and talking in whispers about her appearance. I was worried that Manisha would overhear and be too embarrassed to go back to church. I snuck up behind every one of them and whispered that it was because of the medicine she was taking and not to talk about it.

One evening I dropped Manisha off at church for the Sunday evening service and drove to my prayer group that was meeting in someone’s home. I received a call a few minutes later that Manisha laid her head on the desk and fell asleep. I was worried she had a seizure. Could the tumor (if that’s what it was) be growing? Every time she had a headache it sent me into a tailspin. The doctors finally told me it was okay for Manisha to have headaches.

Every little thing made me worry. If she was hyperactive on a particular day, I wondered if there was increased pressure in her brain and if it could cause brain damage. I was afraid to let her out of my sight in case something happened. Suppose she went swimming with some friends and had a seizure? Manisha’s seizures were not petit mal seizures; they were long and protracted, partial complex seizures, requiring immediate care.

The steroids made her mean and difficult to parent. I didn’t want to discipline her when she was already going through so much—with all the IVs, multiple blood draws, the long hospitalization, and the change in her appearance—how could I? And what if she died? I didn’t want to remember disciplining her.

One afternoon we went for a walk and Manisha rode her bike. As we headed back to the house her breathing was labored. We paused to give her a chance to catch her breath. I worried that her weight gain was putting too much stress on her heart. She developed asthma-like symptoms and I contacted a pulmonologist to have her checked. We returned to Shands for a full pulmonary workup. It eventually went away on its own.

One night we were sitting in the pew at church and I glanced down at her and noticed a bulge on her neck. I panicked and quickly took her to the restroom. I massaged her neck and found a swollen lymph node. Two things came to mind—cat scratch fever or cancer. Our cat gave her a good scratch a couple of weeks earlier. I hoped that was all it was.

We made several trips to the doctor until it was finally decided we didn’t need to biopsy it. I worried over it for too long. Manisha would kink her neck in rebellion every time I wanted to check it.

One weekend I had the grand idea to spend a couple of nights at the beach on a campout. I bought all sorts of treats and goodies and stacked them up in the living room.

The next morning Manisha woke me up.

“My neck hurts,” she said.

I took her temperature and she had a fever. I quickly dressed her and took her to the emergency room fearing she had meningitis. She didn’t; so much for a weekend camp-out. Many fun activities were sabotaged. I gave up trying to have any.

My fear paralyzed me and depression consumed me. My emotional state made me feel like a failure as a Christian. Prayer and reading the Bible were both difficult. There was no joy in either and my guilt over it compounded my feelings of isolation and defeatism. I resigned myself to being a joyless Christian and hoped no one knew how I felt deep down inside.

There was only one verse out of the Bible that quieted my anxious spirit. I would say it over and over to myself. It was the only verse that gave me peace. “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you” (I Peter 5:7).

A month later we returned to Shands for the CAT scan with contrast. It showed a good result so the doctors felt like we were on the right track.

However, in November, Manisha woke up one morning with a sore throat and began running a fever. I took her to her pediatrician. The nurse took a swab for strep throat and left the room, leaving us for a few minutes. As we were waiting Manisha had a seizure. I ran out of the room in a panic yelling for her doctor to come quickly. He hurried in and Manisha acted fine, but I knew she had one. He didn’t believe me.

He performed a couple of breath-holding tests to see if she would have another one. She didn’t. He left the room again to check the results of the throat test. Manisha seized again. I ran out and yelled for him to come. He walked back in and saw it for himself.

The nurse called Shands to consult with her pediatric neurologist. Dr. Kohrman wanted Manisha admitted back into the hospital for observation. The nurse got an ambulance and we rushed her to Shands.

This time Manisha was admitted to the pediatric floor and was in a room with three other children. I spent the night down the hall attempting to sleep on some chairs in the waiting area. All night I recited every Bible verse I could remember from memory. My anxious heart deprived me of sleep. The following day it was discovered her Tegretol level was too low.

“We need to double her dosage,” the doctor told me, “and we will recheck her level in a month.”

Her doctor also recommended another MRI to see how things looked. After a one-night stay in the hospital, Shands discharged Manisha with a return date the following week for another MRI.

The results of the MRI were devastating.

“No change, no change,” replayed in my mind all the way home from the hospital. The doctors began questioning the diagnosis.

Manisha was placed back on a second course of Prednisone to last for four months. A second course of Albendazole was started.

The scientific literature stated for the Albendazole to be most effective, it had to be taken with fatty foods. I went to the grocery store and bought several containers of whipping cream and gave it to her three times a day with hot chocolate. I cringed because
I was giving her so much fat when she had already gained over ten pounds, but because the first treatment of Albendazole had been ineffective without the fatty foods, I wanted to make sure this time it worked. I was still clinging to the hope that she had neurocysticercosis and not a brain tumor.

The next MRI wasn’t scheduled until March and five long months followed October. Feeling isolated from the rest of the world physically, emotionally, and mentally, we continued with homeschooling. Nothing had happened on the adoption referral I received in August for Thi My-Sa as she waited in an orphanage. I wondered with all of Manisha’s medical problems if I had made a terrible mistake. Even if things had been moving along, I didn’t see how I could go to Vietnam to get her.

Emotionally I struggled. Trusting God, homeschooling, ongoing medical issues, the uncertainty of the diagnosis, and fear about whether I should continue with the adoption left me feeling overwhelmed.

In the back of my mind were financial worries. The Vietnamese adoption was a stretch. With all that had happened, I wasn’t able to work as much. The bills were coming in from her nine days in the hospital, and it was time consuming to make sure every bill was accurate and my insurance paid the correct amount.

One afternoon it was raining outside and I was particularly down. I got a chair and scooted under the eve of the house and sat for several minutes watching the rain fall gently on the deck and flowers in the back yard. It was a peaceful rain and the air smelled misty. It had been a long time since I had taken a few moments to relax and have a conversation with God.

I told God how depressed I was, how uncertain I was about the future, and how worried I was about Manisha. I was tired of doctor’s appointments, medicines, fevers, isolation, and homeschooling a cantankerous child on steroids. I wanted Him to end my pain and make it all go away. I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but it made a difference to tell God how I felt.

Little by little God didn’t take away my pain, but He helped me to realize that I had to trust Him for Manisha, I had to trust Him about the second adoption, and I had to trust Him for my finances. I had to be content in my situation. I Timothy 6:6 says, “But godliness with contentment is great gain.” I had forgotten what that was like.

So much of my worry was about me. I didn’t want to be alone again. After being abandoned by my father and husband, I didn’t want God to take my child from me. Could I still love God regardless of the outcome or would I abandon Him, my first love?

After Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand, many disciples turned away from Him because they could not accept the costs associated with being His follower.

“You do not want to leave me, too, do you?” Jesus asked the twelve. Simon Peter answered him. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the holy one of God” (John 6:67 69).

When my husband left me in 1985, I pleaded desperately for God to save my marriage. “I can’t live without him,” I cried out to Him. “I will do anything You want if You will just bring him back to me.” I lost all respect for myself and the dignity that God bestowed on me because I was created in His image.

To give that much power to someone or something is to make an idol out of it. Whether I consciously realized it or not, I had to choose who or what I loved the most. To
choose anything besides God is to be deceived by the “Father of Lies” who promises happiness but delivers death.

I couldn’t bargain with God. I had no rights. “The wages of sin is death…” Romans 6:23 tells us. My lack of trust in God made me feel like death had already ensnared my life because hopelessness and despair became a living hell. My joy was gone. My life was like a gymnast on a balance beam precariously in limbo of falling. If God was the beam, I had to focus my eyes on Him and keep my eyes on the beam the whole time.

A great cloud of witnesses was watching. My life was a testimony, perhaps the only testimony that some would ever see. A few nights later, after a quiet time with God, I released my greatest fear to Him.

“Dear Lord,” I cried, “No matter what you choose to do with Manisha, I will love You and trust You in my pain.”

Nothing extraordinary on the outside changed, but in my heart God had work to do. He had to claim back territory that I had given over to the enemy.

Jesus told John in the Book of Revelations to write to the Church in Philadelphia, “I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown.”

To illustrate this in another way, I must tell an old family story.

Chapter Eighteen

I will search for the lost

Ezekiel 34:16

Before my mother remarried, she wanted to give Gene, her new husband to be, a special gift as a token of her love, but Mother was never known for her creativity. Even a mockingbird would have had a hard time imitating her off-key singing. A poetic piece about her Prince Charming would have been a comedy at best. A delectably good steak she prepared one night had Gene reaching for the Band-Aids because it was so red.

“Let’s put a Band-Aid on this cow and we can get him on the road again,” he said. Her lack of depth perception in avoiding cars in parking lots removed all doubt of any kind of ability to draw a three-dimensional romantic picture.

My mother wasn’t blessed with a lot of originality, but there was one thing she could do well. She could knit. One day Mother arrived home with her knitting needles and bundles of yarn in an assortment of colors—reds, browns, yellows and blues, with two well-used brown soles.

“What are you going to do with that?” I asked her.

“I am going to knit a special present to give to Gene on our wedding day,” she said.

Night after night I watched her work tirelessly with the long blue needles moving back and forth. Slowly a beautiful geometric shape of white and yellow diamonds emerged framed by several inches of dark brown stitches that tapered to the bottom part of the top of the slipper. When the slippers were almost complete, she attached the soles with strong black stitches so the slippers would never tear or come apart. After weeks of knitting, a beautiful pair of hand made slippers emerged. Sewn in love and given to Gene on their wedding day, the slippers never lost their specialness.

One summer day a couple of years after my mother and father had married the next door neighbor’s dog was seen carrying one of the slippers off into the woods. Much effort was made to find the slipper the neighbor dog had stolen. A local Boy Scout troop scoured the woods with us looking for it. A week past and despite all of our best efforts, the slipper wasn’t found. We continued to look for it the rest of the summer but it never turned up.

The hot humid nights of summer came and went. The winds of autumn blew brightly colored orange and yellow leaves off the trees leaving them naked and exposed. Winter rolled in and the woods around our house were silent, gray, and cold. Snow blanketed the frozen landscape like white ivory pearls and the lost slipper was forgotten.

Spring arrived once again and the harsh, gray winter receded as signs of life brought renewal. The woods around our house, adorned in the spectacular beauty of layers of white blooming dogwoods, meant hot summer days would soon follow. The whippoorwill would once again serenade us as we caught lightening bugs in peanut butter jars.

One summer evening was different from all the rest. As we relaxed on the porch in the coolness of the day, we caught a glimpse of Gypsy as she ran out of the woods. At first we didn’t notice anything unusual, but as she got closer and slowed to a trot, we could see her carrying something. It was brown with diamond geometric designs. Gypsy strode up with her head held high and plopped down the long lost slipper in front of Dad as if to say, “This belongs to you. It was stolen by a thief, but I found it and am restoring it to you.”

We stared in disbelief as the slipper lay at Dad’s feet after being buried under dirt and snow for a year in the woods. We never knew where she found it, but that was Gypsy. She had quite a reputation for doing the impossible.

As Dad’s wedding slipper was carried off by a marauding dog, so I found myself being swept away by fear and separated from God.

…even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalms 23:4).

Once I was willing to trust God in everything, I had peace. It did, still does, and always will require a daily refilling of God’s Spirit through reading my Bible, prayer, and fellowship with God and other believers. Dad passed away in 1994 and Mother gave me the slippers. For the last fourteen years I have kept them in the top of my closet. Every once in a while I will bring them down to look at them. They help me remember not only about the lost slipper, but how God restored that which was lost.

Chapter Nineteen

There are many plans in a man’s heart,

but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails

Proverbs 19:21

Winter passed into spring and I worked hard homeschooling Manisha around my captioning schedule. The Prednisone course was tapered and stopped the first week of March. On March 29 a follow up MRI was done that showed “significantly decreased size of a previously seen enhancing scan right frontopolar region lesion as well as significantly decreased surrounding edema,” according to Ronald G. Quisling, M.D., of Shands.

Easter arrived two days later after I received the results. I praised God and thanked Him for His healing. From all appearances, it was neurocysticercosis. The second course of Albendazole had worked.

I had Manisha privately tested by her first grade teacher upon completing the second grade homeschooled, and Mrs. Adams was impressed with Manisha’s academic progress. She jumped by two grade levels in both math and reading and was on grade level going into the third grade. I felt like we had gotten over the hump, and I was ready for my second daughter to join our family.

In May I took Manisha camping at the Manatee Springs State Park for a one-night camp-out. It had been a long time since we had fun together. I packed our camping gear and bought food to cook tacos on our outdoor Coleman stove.

Manatee Springs is about an hour’s drive from Gainesville to Chiefland. When we arrived, I wanted to set the tent up before we headed for a swim in the cold 72-degree freshwater spring. I was worried that I had forgotten how and didn’t want to be thinking about it as we swam.

I laid out the four corners of the tent several times with no success. As I was getting more and more frustrated with my ineptness, a red shoulder hawk sat on a perch a few feet away and watched. Normally hawks don’t want anything to do with humans, but this one took a special interest in my activity. Maybe we were close to his nest. Maybe he was comparing me to all the other intelligent campers who knew how to put up a tent, or maybe God was reminding me “…the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous” (I Peter 3:12).

I will never know, but his piercing eyes made me feel like I was being watched. I kept my cool and eventually the tent was all in one piece. As soon as it stood tall, the red shoulder hawk flew away and I never saw him again.

A few weeks into the summer, we hosted a Japanese student who came and lived with us. We drove to Crescent Beach so Rika could experience the Atlantic Ocean. We made sand castles, jumped salty waves, and bought ice cream which melted in the hot July sun. Rika introduced us to Sushi and spoiled me with her unselfish babysitting of Manisha. When it came time for her to return to Japan, we mourned as if we had always been together.

On a whim Manisha and I went to an exotic animal show and came home with a Jack Russell puppy. After nearly a year, things were returning back to what was “normal” chaotic living for us, where I was always doing at least one too many things. In the back of my mind, however, I was antsy about my little girl who sat in a Vietnamese orphanage waiting on paperwork. Over a year had passed and nothing had been done.

One afternoon I received an unexpected letter from the adoption agency. The agency was informed a couple of months earlier by Anne, the Vietnamese facilitator, that I had to start paying $250 per month in orphanage fees. The adoption agency had paid it for two months and now they were passing the cost on to me. I was livid. It seemed like Anne was asking for money to keep Thi My-Sa in the orphanage when her job was to get my referral out of the orphanage.

I wondered if Anne was doing all she could to process the paperwork or if there was something else going on. I also knew the adoption agency was no longer working with her on adoptions and had hired a new facilitator. Because I had already paid the total fee, I couldn’t switch to the new one unless I wanted to pay another six thousand dollars, which I didn’t have. A year had gone by and nothing had happened on the documentation.

By this time my I 600 Petition was on the verge of expiring and my home study had expired. I went to my church and asked some of the elders to pray. I could renege on the adoption and ask for another referral, but I was worried about what would happen to Thi My-Sa. She might spend the rest of her life in an orphanage. If I renewed my I 600 Petition and paid $250 a month for her care in the orphanage, what motivation would Anne have to make sure the officials ever processed her documents?

After much prayer, I asked the adoption agency for a new referral. I began the laborious process of redoing my I 600 Petition and updating my home study. I came close to giving up, but I still felt like God had given me the dream of a second child.

One last time I resubmitted all the documents. I went directly to the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Jacksonville to have my fingerprints redone. I was able to do the process quickly and complete it by the end of the summer.

It had been over two years since I had started the Vietnamese adoption. I received a new referral shortly after the documents were resubmitted. The referral was for a three and a half year old. Her Vietnamese name was Nguyen Thi My-Duyen (see “Bits and Pieces” at end of book for additional information), and she was born on July 15, 1996. I was excited to have another referral so quickly but mentally it would take a while for my emotions to follow.

A picture via the Internet shortly arrived on my computer. The Vietnamese girl was dressed up like someone had taken the time to make her appear like a “little Vietnamese doll.” I accepted the referral and began to talk with Manisha about another new baby sister. After so much time had passed, I was not sure she believed me. I was also leery about getting my hopes up. I had to trust God that this was the child He wanted me to have. In my heart I was still thinking about the little girl I had prayed for over a year.

September 18th came and went, marking the one year anniversary of The Wizard of Oz on Ice and the fifth year since my dad’s departing. Plans for me to go to Vietnam progressed quickly. The Vietnamese officials in charge of adoptions set my date for the “Giving and Receiving” Ceremony, and Kim’s World Travel in Denver, Colorado, purchased my plane ticket for me to travel in the middle of October.

The Murphys agreed to take care of Manisha while I was gone. I could picture them over the holidays baking cookies and enjoying other things that I neither had the time to do nor talent for. I encouraged Sylvia to do as much homeschooling as Manisha wanted
to do (which probably wouldn’t be much), but I figured we could catch it up when I returned. Although I hated to leave Manisha behind, I didn’t feel comfortable taking her with me. I was fearful of her having a seizure either on the plane or in a third-world country where the medical care was suspect.

It seemed as if everything was falling into place until something happened.

Chapter Twenty

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted

Matthew 5:4

One evening Manisha felt insecure so I told her she could sleep in my room on a spare cot. The next morning I was awakened by a shrill, scratching noise and asked her to stop because the noise was bothering me. She continued scratching.

A little annoyed, I woke up and said it louder, and as I did so, I glanced over to make sure she heard me. To my dismay I could see she was staring off into space with one arm draped off the side of the cot, her fingernails scratching my dresser as she breathed. I screamed in horror, “No!”

I jumped out of bed and scooped her up in my arms, as she sleepily came to. Half carrying her and half helping her to walk, I managed to scoot her over far enough in the front seat of my red Firebird to shut the door, and drove as quickly as I could to the hospital ignoring red lights and speed limits.

By the time we arrived at the emergency room, she woke up but was disoriented, not knowing where she was or what had happened. We went through another several hours of waiting until they could get to us.

After checking her Tegretol level, they discovered it was a little low. Her pediatric neurologist also wanted to do another MRI just to be sure nothing else was going on.

I was reluctant to do the MRI because it meant we would have to postpone the trip to Vietnam, but I also knew I had to do the right thing for Manisha. I cringed as I remembered the deadline looming of December 31 when the Vietnamese dossier would expire. If I did not go and complete the adoption by the end of the year, I would have to start all over. The documents were not something that could be done quickly or inexpensively. It meant I would never make it to Vietnam.

The trip was put on hold and another MRI was scheduled. The “…repeat MRI showed that the lesion had virtually disappeared, the enhancement was absent, but the edema had returned to the level of November, 1998.” This prompted Dr. Carney to want to do a biopsy (letter dated 11-5-98 from Margaret K. Hostetter, M.D.). The only part that mattered to me was that they wanted to do surgery. I called my mother in a panic and told her what the doctors had told me.

Once again I contacted Dr. Hostetter to get her opinion, considering the pending trip to Vietnam. I was worried about Manisha and hated the thought she had swelling on her brain. There was still the possibility she could have a brain tumor. I couldn’t bear to leave her behind while I traveled to Vietnam knowing things weren’t right, but I couldn’t risk taking her with me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to adopt a second daughter if Manisha were ill. It’s stressful enough to adopt a child. The bottom line was: I wouldn’t do the adoption unless Manisha was okay. I wasn’t sure what “okay” meant.

I also didn’t know what was going to happen with Y2K. Naysayers were predicting doomsday. All I knew was that I wanted to be back to the U.S. before January 1 came around in case the computers that kept the planes from falling out of the sky froze. I didn’t want to be stranded in Vietnam.