November Adoption Awareness Month – Day Thirty

I just cannot believe I did a post every day of this month.  I usually don’t have that much to say but it has been good for me.

Yesterday I had to take mom to the doctor – seems easy enough but for me it puts me over my limit physically and mentally, I don’t have the stamina and just getting there and back is an effort.  The after effect of not having any family health history and what I will have to live with for the rest of my life – all thanks to being adopted.  I would still have my disease but I would not have been mis-diagnosed that is what caused the damage.

So I got to moms and visited for a bit while she got ready and then took her to the cardiologist in town.  I wasn’t feeling that well and had told her I wouldn’t stay when we got back but just head home.

So the doctor comes in and mom introduces me as her daughter and said her heart is in worse shape than mine, you should look at her because she isn’t feeling well.  The doctor looks at me and I give him the abbreviated version of my story noting the mis-diagnosis due to my age and no family history, what happened and my rare disease.  Then mom pipes in to me - your mother died in her sleep quite young didn’t she? and then realizes how that would sound to the doctor and turns to him and notes her birth mother - we adopted her, and then I add in the additional family members who had the same events…and we talk a bit and then the doctor says they adopted too…

And as I was driving home I had a couple of thoughts…

Good for mom for using just the term mother without giving it a second thought, and only qualifying it when she realized the doctor was probably confused…

Good for the ”new” adoptive dad to realize that the “old hand” at being an adoptive mom does not use a qualifier before referencing my other mother.  I am sure he picked up on it.  Mom did good – she provided some educational thoughts to a new adoptive parent…

I think he will start to worry about his little adoptee and the lack of medical history he has…I think people think there are so few of us and never hear about those impacted…hopefully I planted a seed in someone who could speak up and make a difference.

And finally – adoption seems to always be around me wherever I go, there is no escape.  I am an adoptee.  Adoption is not just a one time event like they are trying to make it out to be now-days…being an adoptee is for life, being reminded of it time and time again wherever I go, is for life.

If this post does not make much sense it is because after yesterday I am totally done in, my body is exhausted and my brain does not want to work…

 

November Adoption Awareness Month – Day Twenty-nine

Edited 11/29/10 – just realized one of my ‘mistakes’ from my aphasia – My title read November Adoption Awareness “Disease” – Day Twenty-eight…too funny but all to common for me…ooops and apparently the wrong days as well…

Rare diseases strike adoptees too but without a family health history we are even more vulernable…it has to change…somebody has to make it change…

This is the rare disease I was diagnosed with and my story is similar to Jennifers…

In the video below they are asking everyone in the USA to vote daily and I think it ends the last day of November so if you are so inclined to a text message each day – that would be great.

Thanks guys…

 

November Adoption Awareness Month – Day Twenty-eight

(Edited to change title from Twenty-seven…to the correct Twenty-eight)

All month-long I have tried to stay on the positive side of adoption while talking about the hard stuff as well.  It has been a good excercise for me and I hope for anyone who reads this blog.  Today I am kind of fed up and need to vent…don’t go any further if you think you will be upset because you may disagree – you’re welcome to disagree – but these things bother me because they happen over and over and over again.  Note the term birth is used here simply because it is used elsewhere – I don’t use it in real life because to me it is demeaning.

Things said to me (or read my me) that are guaranteed to make me cringe…

Not all biological familes….look alike, or share the same personality, or get along, or have their family health history, or loves their kids…whichever statement applies to an adoptees specific words on the subject of being an adoptee…

You could have been aborted…obviously I wasn’t so your point is…

Your mother loved you enough to give you away….of course said in PAL terminology, NO it does not make me feel special it makes me feel less than and flawed…

She promised to give us her child…said after a mother decides to parent who was in one of those pre-birth matching schemes

It isn’t in the best interests of OUR child to have contact right now with the birthfamily…sounds like a really lame excuse when you have no definitive reason to stop contact…why not just say you can’t be bothered anymore…

What if the child (approx 9) does not want us to send pictures and updates…used as an excuse to stop sending updates – gee wonder who picked up on whose vibes here…

OUR birthmother gave us such a precious GIFT…I literally cringe when I read or hear this – adoptees are not gifts – we are human beings - have a little respect…

OUR birthmother said she was not coerced and is happy that she placed her child – said to the parents who hold the key to keeping the adoption open

OUR adoption was going along fine until we found out the BIRTHFATHER was going to contest the adoption…and it was a year before it was resolved - so much wrong with this sense of entitlement I can’t even begin to explain…

We have passed out all our ‘hoping to adopt’ business pass along cards…the whole business card concept creeps me out and I really hope you aren’t handing them out to any pregnant women you see who doesn’t have a ring on their finger

Help us fundraise for our adoption…something else that doesn’t sit right with me – do they give the money back after they use the adoption tax credit (pretty sure they don’t) and besides you know that you could simply put the amount of a car payment away for 4 or 5 years and not need to fundraise to adopt…

The term ‘forever families’…doesn’t work for me…won’t ever work for me…if you want to be a family just be a family…

 

 

November Adoption Awareness Month – Day Twenty-seven

Grief, grieving and the societal consequences of sharing your feelings…

I see some great parents who recognise that to be adopted means you lost your family and that is the greatest tragedy anyone can have. How or why you lost your family is always different, it is a loss, it is never a gain. Granted some feel the loss more, some less, some will have more tragedy in their story of loss, some not so much. But loss of your family is loss no matter how it came about or for whatever reasons.

I see those same great parents discuss ways to ensure their children know they have the right to feel grief over their loss. They discuss ways to ensure they regularly check in while not trying to make their children feel the loss if they are not ready to do so. I think these parent truly care and are willing to go outside of the norm and deal with it…and I am thankful they exist.

But a part of me is also hesitant, simply because I don’t believe you ever heal completely from a loss and am worried that they expect their children to heal and get over it. Perhaps not consciously but rather subconsciously some or even many of them may they feel if they ensure their child can talk about their feelings openly without judgement and have the tools they need…they will get over it and will grow out of it and have a happy successful joy filled life having dealt with the loss early on.

Many of my friends tell me that they are like me and did not really feel the depths of the loss until they had experienced life as adults and that events triggered the deeper feelings of loss. So that is also part of what makes me hesitant about the expectations of these parents who do their best to ensure their child has the right to grieve and expects them to be healed, what if the true depths of grief does not happen until their child is middle-aged? Will they be just as non-judgemental then or will they act the same way some parents act when commenting on adult adoptees blogs? That is my fear. That their children who were given the tools to learn how to deal with their loss early may not find the same compassion as when they were young, because they were supposed to have dealt with it as a child.

I have healed from the death of my child so many years ago but I have not gotten over it. The loss is always there, a shadow hovering close to me every day. No matter how hard I try to continue on there are triggers like birthdays and anniversaries that remind me that he was in my life no matter how short a time we had together. And society allows me to always have these moments of sadness. It is justified, accepted that I will feel this loss for the rest of my life. It is okay to be sad.

And the same applies to my initial loss, the loss of my family. I am a survivor and will always continue on but the triggers of that loss show up in my daily life, every day, there is no avoiding it. I deal with it like I have always dealt with it. But those feelings of loss never completely go away. And because I will never have the chance to hear why I needed to lose my mother and father from the two who also lived it, that loss compounds the initial loss so much more.

But somehow society has decided that adoption loss is something we should be able to get over, move on, deal with it and put it to rest. Society cannot accept that adoption is less than a win-win-win. Adoptees and mothers and fathers who surrendered their children to adoption are not allowed to feel loss. That is the saddest reality of adoption. Mothers and fathers must be okay either because it was a choice they made because they did were not able to parent so they did the next best thing (and coercive tactics never happened…). As adoptees were taken into another family so we lost but we gained so get over it, heal from it, continue on.

Society believes that in adoption loss plus gain equals good, a formula for success and everyone comes out a winner.

It’s just not so easy when it is your life society is talking about. Parents and society in general, please don’t be snowed by the win-win-win all will be well message provided by the adoption industry…life does not always work the way they say it will. Sometimes life just sucks – learn to be compassionate.

 

November Adoption Awareness Month – Day Twenty-six

“Z” is for Zebras…

Zebra is a medical slang term for a surprising diagnosis. Although rare diseases are, in general, surprising when they are encountered, other diseases can be surprising in a particular person and time, and so “zebra” is the broader concept.

The term derives from the aphorism “When you hear hoofbeats behind you, don’t expect to see a zebra“, which was coined in a slightly modified form in the late 1940s by Dr. Theodore Woodward, a former professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Since horses are the most commonly encountered hoofed animal and zebras are very rare, logically you could confidently guess that the animal making the hoofbeats is probably a horse. By 1960, the aphorism was widely known in medical circles.

So both rare diseases and early age onset of common diseases could be defined as Zebra’s and doctors are told to look for horses not zebra’s.  So a good family health history that showed either a rare disease or early onset of common disease would provide the doctor with an incentive to look for the ZEBRA instead of the horse.

At this point in time they have identified 7,000 rare diseases.  To be qualified as a rare disease there has to be less than 200,000 individuals in the US diagnosed with that specific disease and can at times number less than 100.    

I have been looking for the statistics on the number of adopted individuals in the US and cannot find them but remember it is approximately 2%.  Adopted individuals from the Baby Scoop Era is estimated to be approximately 6 Million.  None of us from the BSE had great starting family health histories and now that we are older those histories, even the good ones are useless.  Those who have found their families may only be able to obtain their maternal family health history, although some is always better than none. 

So how likely is it that two adult adoptees from the BSE, living in different countries would find each other on a message board, become friends and find out we had both be diagnosed with a rare disease?  And would then start a blog together?  Yes – both of us have been diagnosed with a rare disease so we are Zebra’s to the medical world.  One got her diagnosis relatively early – my diagnosis came after being mis-diagnosed with a common disease and then surviving two back to back life threatening events, and then the diagnosis only happened because the specialist was willing to entertain the idea of a Zebra, not a horse.

But when I read different adult adoptee blogs I find we are not the only ones with rare diseases or being diagnosed at an early age for a common disease.  

So how rare is it for an adoptee to be diagnosed with a rare disease or at an early age for a common disease?

I think this type of study would actually be beneficial study on Adoptees…

If you are an adoptee that falls into either category, i.e. a ZEBRA - please leave a comment.  Should we not be working together to make the adoption world aware this is a bigger problem than anyone realized – for the next generation of adoptees?  Because we know there will be more generations of adoptees…

  

 

 

November Adoption Awareness Month – Day Twenty-five

“Y” is for Yes I am thankful….

Although I am not in the states today I am thankful for the love mom and dad give/gave me unconditionally.  They are/were great people and impacted my life in a very good way.  I know that other adoptees did not get the same as I did. 

I am thankful for my husband who loves me, takes care of me and will always have my back.  And that without him I might not still be here today.

I am thankful for all my friends on-line in the world of adoption, without them life would be very lonely.

I am thankful it has been snowing since last night the world looks so wonderful blanketed in white. 

I am thankful I have a wonderful home filled with dogs and cats. 

I am thankful I have a beautiful back yard where at any given point you can see squirrels and birds happily munching on the variety of food that is provided.  Today staring out my kitchen window I saw Northern Flickers WP’s, Starlings, Wrens, Finches, Bush Tits, Nuthatches, Chickadees, Towhees, Sparrows, Stellar Jays and of course the Crows…I have not seen my Downy or Pileated Woodpeckers…

I am thankful I live in a country where healthcare premiums do not bankrupt you (hardly makes a dent in the family budget) and you cannot be denied for pre-existing conditions.  That going to the hospital will not cost you your home.  That seeing my doctor today or tomorrow is always possible.