June 30th, 2008 admin
It was a very early morning…I can’t remember the last time I got up at 3:30 AM. We got out of the house on time and dad dropped us off at the airport.
Well we made it to Atlanta after leaving KC 1-1/2 hours late. Apparentley the flight crew needed their government regulated beauty sleep after getting into KC 3-hours late the night before. As of 1:30 Atlanta time we appear to be on-time for our departure to Moscow.
Hopefully the next time I post up we will be settled into our hotel room in Moscow.
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June 26th, 2008 admin
We are once again going through the familiar routine of preparing to fly off to Russia. We have a court date of July 4th. We will be leaving KC on Monday morning and will arrive in Moscow on Tuesday.
We will spend a day in Moscow getting physicals and will then jump on the overnight train to Cheboksary. We will get a chance to see Christopher on Thursday and from what we have heard we can expect court on Friday to be an all day ordeal. Caroline & I have decided to not stay in the region for the the 10-day waiting period and are opting to fly back to the states to spend a week at home and then fly back to Russia to pick up Christopher. This decision was based on the fact that it was unlikely that we would have custody of Christopher during those 10-days and we really didn’t want to be away from Alex for three weeks. So it looks like we are officially int he home stretch…
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June 21st, 2008 admin
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
To fully appreciate the day I had you must first realize a few things.
First, I put in my notice at work two weeks ago and tomorrow will be my last day at BWR.
Second, I found out on Tuesday that the tremendous pain I had been experiencing over the past week, which resulted in me spending most of Fathers Day weekend in bed under the influence of painkillers, was a result of a large kidney stone. The CT scan showed that it was trapped at the entrance of the bladder. The doc informed me that this is the constriction point in the plumbing system and wasn’t very optimistic that it would complete its journey from my body without the help of a “PROCEDURE”.
Third, any day now we could be getting a phone call that we need to be back in Russia for our adoption court date.
So back to the procedure. Based on my research immediately following this outpatient procedure I will be in some pain for up to three days…no biggie…send me home with some painkillers and I’ll be good to go. However, during this procedure they will place a stent between my kidney and bladder to help in the healing process. This stint would not be removed until seven days after the procedure. Again all my Internet research showed that other people experience many days of pain after the removal of the stent. So all in all we are looking at nearly 10+ days before I will start feeling better. This fact creates a significant problem should we get a call from our agency telling us we need to leave for Russia in 10 days. (worse case scenario – RIGHT?) Wrong!
After calling our adoption agency coordinator and informing her of my situation and telling her that should we get a call in the next 5-days for a court date we will have to decline and have them pic a later date. Not 20-minutes after I spoke to her, she called me back to tell me that we in fact now have a court date for July 4th. CRAP! I informed her that won’t work and to inform them of this fact.
Here we have been working on this adoption for 3-years and it has to be postponed because of a kidney stone.
After I got off the phone I was a bit depressed…but at that point I thought to myself if I can pass this stone today we will be good to go and won’t have to push things back. So I proceeded to consume large amounts of water, coffee and tea. At one point a co-worker found me at the sink in our break room slamming a large glass of water – to which he said “hey man did you just get done running up the stairs” to which I proudly replied “nope, I’m going to pass a kidney stone today come hell or high water” Words cannot describe the look he gave me. So as I sat at my computer pushing on my bladder I started to feel some pain. This could mean only one thing – the stone is on the move. I knew from looking at the CT scan the stone was very close to the bladder and if I could get it into the bladder I would have no problem passing it today.
I immediately picked up the phone and called our agency to tell them not to reschedule our court date until I call them back later in the afternoon.
Sure enough over the next hour and a half I was able to pass my stone.
In a matter of hours I went from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs.
So hear I sit today knowing that on July 4th, 2008 I will be in a Russian court putting the finishing touches on this process and officially becoming the father of Christopher Sergei Braley.
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