"Don't come back to see me...ever"

Today was Lucy's appointment at Children's Hospital with a pediatric cardiologist. I made the appointment back in April when we started making our travel plans. At that time, I wanted her to be seen but was anxious about how our bonding would be going or how I would be able to comfort her with all the big, scary machines. She did great. And it was interesting that she knew how to position herself for the echocardiogram and was not afraid of all the "stickers" for the EKG. The tech's kept saying that she had obviously done this before. There wasn't a whine or whimper although I did keep handing her rice crackers, her favorite.

The doctor finally came in with argyle sweater vest and wingtips to say "she's totally healthy. The hole has spontaneously closed in the past 6 months since her last echo and don't come back to see me...ever." We had a nice conversation about international adoption and he explained the dynamics of the heart and sent us off. Done.

Somehow, I just never put her heart condition on the list of worries. ( I had others, believe me...) Holes in the heart can be fixed here, was all I kept thinking.We have great facilities in the Denver area. We have insurance. What can be such a big deal? But at the White Swan we met all kinds of amazing people adopting kids with missing limbs or digits, cerebral palsy, or cleft palates and they thought we were brave to take on a heart condition. I started thinking that perhaps, I have been naive or blindly optimistic. Or, following my heart and not my head. Our friend and cardiologist, John McNeil, had looked over her referral records, called it mild to moderate and explained best and worst case scenarios - perhaps it was his calm, reassuring voice.

The poet in me just keeps thinking about a hole in the heart and its spontaneous closing in six months. I was calling Kim Morgan at Hand in Hand in December to tell her that we were getting too old and to take us off the waiting list for healthy infants, when she told me about the special needs option and how it would speed up the process. It's now June. And we're whole.