There are good posts and not so good posts. Guess which one this is?

NOT GOOD! I found out yesterday that her MRI was scheduled for OCTOBER 9!! Yes, that would be 22 whole days after we requested it. Not a happy camper here.

I haven't posted all the details on her medical condition basically because I didn't want to type that much. She has a mild form of spina called "spina bifida occulta" which means that there is no hole on the outside of her back, just on her vetebrae. I guess up to 40% of people have this and they don't know it until adulthood and get an XRay on their back. Only 5% of those people have what they call a tethered spinal cord, which means the nerves at the end of her spinal cord are tethered in a ball. If that is the case, she would need neurological surgery to untether the ball. There is a chance it would grow back into a ball. This tethering could cause problems with her growth, her gait, and her bowels.

Yesterday I asked the social worker if they would classify her as special needs if she does have the tethered cord. We want her. There isn't any doubt in our minds about that. But the orphanage "donation" for a non-special needs child is substantially more and that is money we would need for the many operations she will require. I said that if we knew they would do that, we'd accept the referral right now. And she said that we should absolutely not accept the referral until we get the results back. To me it's just a delay. We can't make travel arrangements until we accept. So if the MRI is scheduled for October 9, they don't think we'll get results until around the 14th, which is Sunday. So I'm guessing the 15th. Which means we won't leave until November 5 at the earliest.

I wish they would have just done the MRI on their own before they referred her. It would have given the adoptive family much more information. But, like Rob said, then they would have had to pay for it instead of us.

So instead of being down there by October 1 like we had orginally hoped, she will be a full month older.

In other news, our new administrative assistant started on Monday and man, are my days looking better! :) And if we don't leave until November, I'll have more time to teach her all she needs to know. Or at least all I know. Lucky girl.