Have you noticed that your adopted children who were abused and/or traumatized prior to adoption seem to have a higher incidence of asthma than other children do? I have noticed over the years that children new to my home tend to get sick frequently, especially during the first year of placement. While I hadn’t thought about asthma specifically, shortly after becoming a foster parent I became the owner of a nebulizer. Over the last 14 years, that nebulizer has had quite a workout, so I suppose there is something to it. New research in Puerto Rico indicates that children who have suffered sexual and/or physical abuse have double the average risk of developing asthma. In Boston, Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Juan C. Celedon and his colleagues want pediatricians to screen victims of child abuse automatically for asthma. More importantly, they want pediatricians to be aware that children with asthma may have suffered, or be victims of, child abuse.

Today's guest blog is from John, a retired commercial airline pilot who has adopted four boys from domestic foster care as a single parent. John and his family live in southern California.  

No, I don’t mean RAD as in Radical (Yes, I know that is dated.) I am referring to Reactive Attachment Disorder. My youngest son, Chad, age 18, has RAD. We have attached, that is a true miracle, but the disorder is not something easily disposed of. I suspect some degree of it lasts for a lifetime. He is very attached to me, fairly attached to his 20-year-old brother, and to one friend. That is the limit of real attachment. Like all RAD kids, he came home with very pronounced hyper-vigilance; he always had to be on guard for his safety. Because he was the only person he could trust. Although this has noticeably abated, it can be triggered. This is about an event that was very difficult for him to handle.  

We were on vacation in Germany. We have been there a number of times before, this time we were in Berlin, an interesting city with neat people, and Starbucks on almost every corner. Everything was going very well until Friday night when Chad developed a severe pain in his stomach. It got worse as time passed. By 9 PM, I asked the hotel to call their Doctor. He was alarmed, the pain was intense, and he wondered if there could be a perforation. We got to ride to the hospital in the ambulance. Surprise, only one Nurse spoke any English, very unlike the Berlin we had seen. After blood tests, and X-rays, the Doc had to try and tell me what was happening. Chad could tell we were having language problems (It turns out the doc was a former East German and spoke German and Russian.) so he was understandably frightened. We got it sorted out, it was something he ate, no surgery needed. The painkillers were working and we took a cab back to the hotel. He was upset, as in very very upset.

So after all of this hardcore thinking that I have been doing about whether or not to go ahead with the foster to adopt process, I finally thought that it was time to take action, and continue on with the things that were still left undone. Something that we had yet to do was to get a TB test for everyone, and our county only does that one day a week.

So I loaded up the kids in the car and headed out for a quick trip to the health department. It isn’t far from our house at all, and even though the car had been acting a little odd and had an appointment to be looked at tomorrow morning, I felt confident that my ever reliable vehicle would get me halfway across town and back safely

 Our guestblogger today is Susan Metters (aka, Snafu Suz), a 40-something writer, cancer survivor, and aspiring mom.  She and her husband are currently approved to adopt and are waiting to be matched with a sibling group of 2 or 3 through the foster system.  They are first-time parents, and a little bit crazy.  They have adopted several fur-kids in their 13-year marriage and decided it was time to adopt some of the human variety.  They share a home on wooded acreage in the Pacific Northwest with their two old, beloved, shelter dogs.  You can read about Susan’s life adventures by visiting her two Seattle PI blogs: Lemon Margaritas and Adoption Adventures. Her adoption blog can also be found at SeattleMomBlogs.com.

We're in that part of the adoption process where we're just waiting.  All the paperwork, interviews and classes are done.  We're approved now and just waiting for a kiddo or two (or three).

When we were doing our paperwork and classes we tried to plow through it as quickly as we could.  I had surgery in the middle of it all which slowed us down, but we tried to plug away at it consistently.  From the time we sent in our application to the time we got approved was about 5-months.

I know that may not sound very fast, but as every adoptive parent knows the amount of stuff we had to do was pretty monumental.  We were also limited by class availability and our social worker's schedule.  It took her 6-weeks just to write up our home study report!  After reading the report I realized what a huge task that was.  When I think about it all, it's no wonder it took 5-months.