Shingles- and why I'm thankful

I (Rob) found out this week that I have shingles.  It's almost exam week at seminary, term papers are due next week, I'm scheduled to speak at a Chinese church in Miami next week...great timing, body.

Shingles started with what I thought was a strained muscle in my back.  Then some tingling in my skin around that area and spreading to my armpit and chest.  Before we learned it was shingles, my thoughts for possible problems were:
*fast moving cancer (not unlikely, given my family history)
*heart disease (I always assume this is inevitable as I get older)
*kidney failure (because WebMD suggested it)
*spider bite (since moving to Florida, I've woken up TWICE in the middle of the night because a large roach crawled across me.  I killed both roaches.  If roaches are crawling on me at night, why not spiders?  And we have some BIG spiders in Florida.)

But then, very suddenly, the rash and bumps appeared, and I was able to rule out all of those except "spider bite," which then got ruled out by the doctor saying "you have a textbook case of shingles," which, for those of you that don't know about shingles, it's basically short for "What chicken pox does when it's been dormant in your body for decades and gets bored."

So compared to my fears, shingles isn't so bad, and I'm thankful for that.

Also, when researching shingles, I've realized that the only people who really write their personal medical experiences online are people who have horrible experiences.  Nobody writes "yeah, I had such-and-such illness and it was not as bad as I feared."  No, nobody with those experiences is motivated to write about it.  The stories you see online are: "I was in constant pain for 4 months." "I wanted to stab myself and cut off my skin."  "It was more painful than my broken tailbone."  And everyone who hears you have shingles shares the horror stories they've heard or experienced.   So I've been ready for the worst pain of my life.  Thankfully, that hasn't happened...yet.

But it is painful.  Very painful.  And itchy...burningly itchy.  And this will probably last several weeks.  I woke up today and the pain had risen to a new level.  It's hard to concentrate long enough to study, write papers, or work.  And the kids don't understand why I can't hold them or roughhouse with them, which makes things much harder for April, too.

So to sum up, I'm thankful that I don't have any of the things I feared at first, and I'm thankful that my case isn't as bad as it could be.  But I don't like having shingles.  And if anyone wants their kids to get chicken pox, send them over, I think I'm entering my contagious phase soon.

(Also, for the seriously twisted, I have pictures of the rash available upon request.)

Bureaucracy

it seems we are destined to have bureaucratic problems at every step of our life with kids. We never mentioned it on the blog, but a few weeks ago, when we picked up Trey's passport, it had misidentified him as female. The paperwork we filled out was correct, they just goofed. Sound familiar? Anyway, it was no biggie. We just had to wait another 3 weeks to get the correct passport.

Ah, but then the fun part begins. Foreign children born in East Asia are given an automatic 30 day "visa." The parents have one month to get a passport and new visa for the child. We only need a visa so that he can legally EXIT the country at the end of June.

With April stuck in bed for 2 weeks after the birth (and still physically weak from blood loss even after that), we couldn't apply for a passport until several weeks after Trey was born (both parents must be present to apply for a passport). So we were already pushing it.

But we thought, "Hey, no problem. They have to understand that we don't even have a passport for him, so we can't get a visa, right?" No. There's a reason that the most common adjectives associated with "bureaucracy" are "cold" and "heartless."

At the first visa office, they wouldn't even look at our application after seeing the date on his birth certificate. They sent us to another office where the annoyed man dismissively commanded me to go to "the other office" to pay a fine, without telling me what office he meant. I asked him "which office?" but he wouldn't answer. I appealed to reason- how could we have gotten a visa without a passport? He said "That's your country's problem, not mine." His slightly more helpful and less belligerent colleague informed me that "the other office" is in another part of town.

So we went there and learned that we would be charged up to $150 as a penalty for allowing our son to "overstay his visa." Again, I appealed to reason. It takes almost a month just to get a passport, why is the law so unreasonable? Isn't there some room to accommodate what is obviously a special situation? We applied for a visa as soon as we were able.

The unflinching lady continued to remind me that my son had overstayed his visa. She then asked if he had left the country at all. I reminded her that we just got the passport yesterday, so no, he could not have left. She then reminded me (in case I had forgotten) that he had overstayed his visa.

[At this point, April and I are seriously wondering if it would be feasible to sneak Trey out of the country in a carry-on bag, just until we get past customs. We could wait until he was sleeping, have his head poking out of the bag, and try to pass him off as one of Cosi's dolls.]

After being told I would need to wait for an hour or more to find out the exact amount of the fine, we waited an hour and a half so they could prepare my confession. (One thing you need to know is that throughout this whole ordeal, Cosi is strapped onto me in an Ergo toddler carrier, and once it gets to confession-signing time, she has had enough and is throwing a tantrum, which makes it very hard to sign things. April has Trey strapped to her and every time she tries to help with Cosi, Cosi takes that as an opportunity to try to hit her baby brother.) I was made to sign a transcript of my conversation with one of the bureaucrats in which I confess that I knew the law stated that he needed a visa within 30 days and that I did not obtain the visa in the prescribed time, thereby flagrantly breaking the just laws of this country.

I would be fined $90. I brought cash.

But no, it's never that easy. First, I need to go to a specific bank. Too bad it was 4:50pm and I couldn't do it that day. I would need to return to that specific bank within the next 2 days and pay the fine. Then I would take that receipt to my local police station and register my son. THEN I could get him a visa. Never mind that the local police station has told me repeatedly not to bother registering my son until he has a visa...

So once the rain lets up a bit this morning, I'm taking Cosi out to the bank, the police station, and the visa office. Two fulls days spent trying to get one little stamp in my boy's passport so that we can leave at the end of the month. I now have a police record with a signed confession (complete with a red thumbprint over my signature).

Here's hoping for no more surprises...

This is April.
Rob went to the bank this morning, but the bank doesn't let people pay fines until after 1:30pm. So, he went back at 2pm. After waiting in line for an hour, the fine is paid. Then, Rob went to the neighborhood police station. Just as we expected, they refused to register our son without a visa. They told us to go to another office, but it's too late to go today. Here's hoping that office is open on Saturdays :)
The drama will continue tomorrow...

Update...
We're supposed to get the passport with visa on Monday. Here's hoping...
And guess what? His corrected birth certificate still isn't back yet. Thank you, American consulate, for destroying my hopes that U.S. bureaucracy was somehow better than East Asian bureaucracy...

Prayer Request for This Week

Today the East Asian consulate refused to give us a visa in Cosi's Ukraine passport. They also refused to give us a visa in Cosi's USA passport (the one with the incorrect birthday). They said we need to have the corrected USA passport and then they'll give us a visa. We weren't planning on making trips into DC every day this week, but we'll do it!

Prayer Requests:
-That April will be able to get the passport office to re-do Cosi's passport (in one day) on Tuesday. She couldn't go today, because it's a holiday. It's their mistake, so hopefully they'll be really helpful.
-That April would be able to get the East Asian visa on Wednesday. She'll need to travel into DC in the morning, make it back to Manassas in the afternoon for an OB appointment (to get approval for plane travel on Thursday), and then travel back to DC to pick up the US Passport with an East Asian visa :)

For REAL?

As April was filling out Cosi's applications for her East Asia visa, she noticed that there was a typo on Cosi's birth date. So after payng extra to have the passport expedited only to have it arrive too late to get her visa before our road trip, we return to find that, according to her new passport, Cosi is turning 10 this year! 2001, 2007- easy mistake.
So, for those who are still following our twisty-turny adoption journey, please pray that we can get Cosi an East Asian visa through her Ukraine passport tomorrow. There's no time to get her U.S. passport fixed and visa'd up before we leave on Thursday.

The latest pictures

Here are a handful of Cosi pictures. I'm posting these mostly just so that April can see them- it's easier than emailing all of them. But everyone else, feel free to enjoy! You'll notice a lot of pictures of her with a book. It's one of the few moments that she was distracted enough that I could pull out the camera. For those who don't know this yet, you can click on a picture to see it much larger.

Oh, and it looks like I might be delayed even further (AAAAARGGGGHHHHH!!!) because we're waiting for her new ID number. Current best case scenario- back in the US by next Friday (the 4th). If I miss seeing the Steelers in the Superbowl because of this, someone in Ukraine will pay dearly.

I'm trying not to be cyncial, but...

My suitcase was all packed except for the pairs of jeans still drying on top of the heater in the guest bedroom that has been my home for most of the past 5 weeks. I was backing up my hard drive, adding videos to my ipod, and planning my snacks for the night.

Today, the court decision became effective; today, Cosi became my daughter. Today, I was supposed to get on an overnight train, arrive there in the morning, pick up the documents from the courthouse, and then hold my little girl for the first time as her legal father.

And then our facilitator, Helen, called- she was in the hospital with kidney stones. At first, we discussed the possibility that I would still go out there alone, meet Pasha, pick up the document, and do what I could until Helen arrived, maybe a day behind me. But then Helen realized that I could do nothing. I am totally helpless- I can neither read nor fill out the forms I would need to use, and we don't know anyone there with enough English to help me out. Traveling all over Trans-Carpathia without a translator and with an adoption on the line just doesn't seem wise.

And then the kidney stones got worse- Helen has a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning. In a transparent effort to keep my hopes up, she says, "Maybe I will be lucky, I don't know. maybe we can go tomorrow." I can tell she is in a lot of pain and that she is also stressed because she knows how this will affect our timing (flights, etc.). I try to be as gracious and reassuring as possible, for her sake. And for my own sake, lest I become completely self-focused.

We will wait and see how tomorrow goes. At some point tomorrow, I need to bring up the possibility of her sending someone else with us. if this drags on for a few days, timing becomes a really big problem.

So another night in Kiev, another night spent wondering if my daughter remembers me and if she wonders where I am. Another night asking God why it has been such a long road with so many unexpected turns and roadblocks. Sometimes I feel this experience chipping away at my ability to trust God. I know he's in control, and I know he's trustworthy, but...

But I'm always afraid to finish that sentence.

Anyway, pray for Helen- a woman you don't know who is probably suffering incredibly right now, more so than the mental and emotional stress I'm sorting through. And at least I have some Oreo's to help me out.

It Gets Worse

So I'm about to call East Asia Interpol myself and see if that helps. Talk about an impasse...

East Asia refuses to do a report on us because we're not criminals. But Ukraine cannot move forward with our adoption until they have that report. Ukraine is willing to accept a document explaining why they won't do a report, but East Asia Interpol won't even produce a document like that.

AAAAARGGGGHHHHH!!!!!