Two pieces of news from friends today on the medical front. First, one friend continues to be burdened with crappy health problems that are actually pretty serious, but not capital-C Chronic. It must really suck – I’m having trouble putting myself in her shoes and really feeling what she feels. Long-term but temporary medical conditions have both a good and a bad part. The obvious bad part is that you hurt and/or feel like shit and/or are bored out of your gourd; the good part is that you are free to remove yourself from the fast-paced rhythms of the world for a while while you recover. Your priorities shift to caring for yourself, rather than caring what some asshole down the street thinks about where you parked your car or whatever.

That’s not to say that the good outweighs the bad – far from it. I would not want to be laid out for a month or more like my friend. I’m really trying to use my ESP to send her good amounts of get-well-wishes from a distance, and hope she recovers fully soon enough to enjoy some of this wacky spring weather we’re having here in Seattle.

The other friend’s wife had a possible medical issue, very serious, but today found out that it wasn’t any of the worst cases; in fact, the ultimate diagnoses look to be pretty mild and relatively easy to deal with. So I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I heard this news. The stress leading up to the appointment today must have been terrible, and in this case I can imagine what he went through because we went through something similar when we got our adoption referrals from Vladivostok. On paper, one of them didn’t look so good from a medical standpoint, but after having them reviewed by three different doctors working in the field of preadoptive medical consultation, we decided to go ahead and accept the referral. We knew there was a chance that serious medical issues would come up, but we kept faith, and now, four years later, we have happy and healthy children. In fact, they may be the healthiest kids I know. Probably, the early exposure to the various bugs and critters in the adoption ward at Baby Hospital #2 in Vlad gave them an impregnable immune system.

I’ve often been accused of being a Pollyanna (i.e. overly optimistic). However, this adoptive parent to a Russian child is WAY out there in terms of optimism. She is referring to the 10-day waiting period after the Russian judge finalizes the adoption, but before you are legally allowed to leave the country:

I am looking forward to the 10-day wait. I hopes to be able to take my new child(ren) on day excursions to help us bond. Maybe visit the beach and see those tragic seals and short-nosed dolphins. A movie. A restaurant. That worn out “amusement park.” A trip to the children’s theater or whatever show is in town. A walk on a trail. A visit to a museum, even if it just a campus exhibit. A ride on a train and then… Ice fishing. Skiing. Mushing.

Maybe I’m a minority of one, but that 10-day period was probably the most exhausting period of my life. Of course, we had two babies, not one older child, but some days we were lucky just to leave the hotel for a walk around the grounds. Ice Fishing? Hahahahahah. Good luck with that.

I think a good rule of thumb for potential adoptive parents (PAPs) is to reduce your expectations to the bare minimum, then be pleasantly surprised on the upside. UPDATE: Same advice goes for Canadians and Portlanders.

I happened to notice in passing that this past Saturday was “National Adoption Day“. This is a day like Earth Day that was created to raise awareness about a specific issue — in this case, the 100,000+ children in foster care awaiting permanent homes.

As the father of two adopted children, I was a little surprised I hadn’t heard about this day before. After all, most adoption-related news items get on my radar in ways that they never would have five years ago. But it was only a chance encounter with a leftover copy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer at Sunny Teriyaki on Saturday night that gave me any indication that this day even existed in the national consciousness.

I read that something like 3,100 children were adopted Saturday. This is great news, both for the children, as well as for the parents. Being a dad is supremely rewarding, and whether it comes naturally, via a drunken Friday-night romp in the backseat of a ‘77 Mustang, or bureaucratically, via a two-year process involving every functionary in the Russian Far East, it is nevertheless an amazing thing to be a father.