THE TRIP TO CHINA to meet our son after what felt like an eternity of waiting took seventeen hours. We went through San Francisco, then hopped on a flight to Beijing. Packing for our trip had taken us almost as long. I had been researching blogs of what to bring when adopting your child from China. There were things I didn’t even think of. I learned they only have diapers there, and not pull-ups. We debated bringing our own car seat or buying one there. The list of items we needed for Will was long. Not only were we first-time parents of a toddler, but we would be in a foreign country where running up to the local Target might not be an option. We were so excited to meet our son for the first time that we didn’t even go to sleep the night before.
We landed in Beijing having not slept in twenty-four hours. Because we had the television crew in tow, things at the airport were a little more complicated than usual. The place was monstrous and unbelievably crowded. We had to take little airport trains just to get to the baggage area. Just like in the movies, everybody was pushing and shoving in order to pack as many people as possible into the train cars.
At last, we got to the baggage claim area, where we met the government minder who had been assigned specifically to us. She told the crew about the restrictions that they had to honor, such as no videotaping of anything that might besmirch the People’s Republic of China. She wasn’t just a government enforcer; she had lots of power as well. It turned out that she could get us around security checkpoints or other obstacles. Being accompanied by a government minder gave us a kind of VIP status, although at the same time we were keenly aware of just how much we were being watched.
This was our first trip to Asia, and it was very special. Bill had always wanted to visit China and Japan. Ironically, one of my dreams has always been to go to India, because I had so many friends who are Indian and I had grown to love the culture. How amazing that the reason a trip to India was in the stars was that our soon-to-be daughter was waiting for us there.
Beijing has about forty million people, so it is overwhelmingly large. Most of the people didn’t seem particularly friendly or happy, but busy and focused.
The adoption process in China actually requires prospective parents to take some time sightseeing before meeting their child so that we can have a better appreciation for the country and culture that the child is from. On our first night in Beijing we met with our local adoption agency guide, named Amy (which was the “English” name she used when meeting with adoptive parents from the U.S.). She gave us our schedule, told us the dos and don’ts for the adoption process, and even taught us a few vital phrases in Mandarin such as how to order food or find the bathroom. She would be our best friend while we were in Beijing, but we would have guides in each of the cities we would be traveling to.
Because Beijing is the capital, I could feel the presence of “Big Brother” more than in any other city we visited. We were told to expect that at any point government officials might look through your belongings and download any media that they felt suspicious of. For that reason, we didn’t bring our cell phones, but got a new one without any personal information just for the trip, and we cleaned out our laptops. Good thing, because after dinner one night it was obvious to me someone had been through my suitcase. Nothing was missing, but things were rearranged.
We were only in Beijing for a few days, but we got to see some amazing and historic landmarks. Bill and I loved being able to tour Tiananmen Square, so rich in Chinese history. We were able to sidestep the crowds because our government minder got us around the security. The next day we made the journey to the Great Wall of China. That was amazing, and as we walked up the steps, all I kept thinking was how much I wished Will was already with us! The Great Wall historically was the divider between China and Mongolia—now, of course, Inner Mongolia, on the other side, is part of China. Knowing that Will was from Inner Mongolia, I wished I could explain to him the history of where he was from. I guessed we would just have to make another trip when he was officially ours! Practically speaking, however, it was probably a good thing he wasn’t with us, because it was absolutely freezing on the Wall. We didn’t last up there very long.
As much as we enjoyed seeing the highlights of Beijing, all we really wanted to do was get to Will! His foster facility in Beijing was a bit far from Tiananmen Square in one of the outer rings. The government minder explained to us about the rings of Beijing. The city was developed in a ring structure, with every few miles having a ring of traffic. These rings also established socioeconomic boundaries, with the rings farther from the center of the city being the most impoverished.
Will’s foster facility was out in the sixth and outermost ring. On our third day in China, we were finally able to visit it to see Will, and we drove with Amy and our government minder to New Day Foster Home. It was fascinating to see how the city changed as we went from the inner rings to the sixth ring. It went from a busy and bustling metropolis almost akin to Manhattan to farmland with small houses and buildings spread out among larger areas of grassland and trees.
New Day Foster Home is a privately run facility that was started by a family from the U.S. They saw a need to help orphans in China who needed complex or specialty medical care, which is difficult if not impossible to get in a government orphanage. This family started New Day with the goal of taking in children who had medical needs and who would otherwise die in a government orphanage. Will was clearly a very lucky little boy to have found his way there.
The facility itself was like a commune of buildings, with an office building, a building for the recreational facilities, a building for housing for younger kids, and another for housing the older ones. The children ranged in age from newborn to school age. Nothing about the complex was visually interesting, but inside, it was clean and well maintained, and the children appeared well cared for. As was customary in Asia, everyone was asked to remove his or her shoes at the door before entering to keep the quarters clean. We got to see Will’s room. It was about six feet by ten feet, with two cribs in it. Each child shared a room. Will’s roommate was an infant, but we were told he liked it because he preferred spending time with the grown-ups or caring for the babies rather than being with kids his own age. He has always been a caretaker!
Now, the moment we had been waiting for was upon us. When we walked into the room where Will was waiting, he immediately recognized us. “Mama! Baba!” he squealed. It was as if in this moment, halfway around the world, the three of us recognized and “found” one another as a family. Our instant connection felt timeless and unlike anything either Bill or I had ever experienced before. To see the wonder and joy in Will’s eyes when he recognized us as his Mama and Baba moved us to our core. Bill and I had tears of joy at the sight of him. It was a unique, wonderful experience. Even though Will spoke very little, we didn’t need to speak at all, as our body language spoke volumes.
We got to spend almost a whole day at New Day. We were able to have lunch with Will, play in the modest playroom, tour the facility, and meet with many of the staff. Both Bill and I were very impressed with what we saw and learned. We met the founders from New York, Byron and Karen Brenneman. They welcomed us with Chinese hospitality and told us that Will was not only a favorite in the foster home, but would be greatly missed.
Will had two primary nannies who cared for him on a daily basis. We got to meet with them and learn about Will’s likes and dislikes, his mannerisms and personality. You could tell that they loved him and were tearful but happy to see him adopted. The foster facility had a pediatrician who came weekly, a speech therapist, a physical therapist, and teachers for school. We learned about Will’s daily routine, medical issues, and everything in between. I audio recorded the whole meeting with his caregivers, so I wouldn’t forget any details that I might need later.
Unfortunately, we were not able to take Will home with us that day, as this was just a lucky visit we were able to have with him before the official adoption process in Hohhot. We would have to go to his birthplace in Inner Mongolia to actually complete the adoption process and take custody of Will. Leaving him at New Day was one of the hardest things we had to do, but of course we knew in two days all this waiting would finally be over.
Before we left, Will’s nannies gave us all of Will’s belongings in case during the official adoption process his government liaison failed to pass them along. One of the precious items we got back was actually the photo album we had sent to him a few months earlier. We had been told after our adoption application was accepted that we could send him photos of us, our home, and family for him to start to get to know us. Someone from the staff had actually laminated some of the photos onto one page, so that Will could carry the page everywhere without getting the photos damaged. We were told he would show it to all the other kids and say, “This is my mama and baba.” Additionally, we were allowed to send him one small gift. We got him his own “Flying Lion” to keep him safe until we were able to bring him home!
The next day, all of us left for Hohhot, where Will’s birth records were located. We didn’t travel together. Bill and I flew, but Will and his travel companion, Gon Lu, took the overnight train, as Will wasn’t allowed to fly with us, not being officially ours yet. Gon Lu, a young woman who served as New Day’s photographer, was truly his best friend, and had volunteered to travel with Will because she loved him so much and wanted to be there for him as he made this transition. She had been with him for two years, ever since he had arrived in Beijing.
Amy actually traveled with us, but she would only be staying a few days, so we met another guide, Sondra, in Hohhot as well. On our first day in Hohhot, Amy and Sondra took us shopping at a local mall to get a few items for Will. We bought a stroller, a car seat (which is not commonly used in China, but the pediatrician in me would not allow me to put Will in a car without one), and of course, a few presents for him for our official first “Gotcha Day.”
The mall reminded me of an indoor flea market. It was a very large warehouse type of space with individually run “shops” that were divided by partitions, different from our malls in the U.S. Although Hohhot is small by China’s standards, a mere five million people, it was actually very crowded, and with the camera crew capturing the trip, we drew lots of attention.
The official meeting to finalize the adoption took place at our hotel the day Will and Gon Lu arrived in Hohhot. Before Will’s entrance, Amy brought us to a small, nondescript hotel conference room that had been set up with a table draped in a tablecloth for ceremonial purposes. There, we met the people who ran Will’s state-run orphanage. The officials took their places at the table—two women sitting on either side of an authoritative-looking man. We went through all kinds of official paperwork, signing official documents such as the adoption decrees and certifications, paid the money still due the state for the processing fees, and signed off on the adoption. When it was over, we were officially in full custody of Will. He was legally our true son!
Next, Amy brought Will and Gon Lu into the room. We both knelt on the floor to hug Will. He was finally, officially ours! Will started to cry as Gon Lu said her good-byes to him. Gon Lu tried her best not to upset Will, but she was still crying. Two years was a long time to be with him, and they had grown really close. But, she was also happy for him, especially knowing that he was going to be so well cared for. Will cried for a little while, and we let him have his space, as we both knew he must have been completely overwhelmed and confused. We thanked Gon Lu profusely for caring for and watching over our amazing son over the last two years, and we promised to keep in touch!
After everybody else left, Bill, Will, and I were together and on our own for our very first time. We left the conference room together, and Will started exploring the hotel, running around with a new burst of energy. The traffic outside the window seemed to excite him. “Beep beeps,” he exclaimed, looking at the mobs of cars and buses driving floors below. We were having so much fun just watching him explore everything around him, but eventually, we had to take him upstairs to our hotel room for our first diaper change. While I changed diapers in the neonatal unit once in a while, this was our first diaper change as parents, and of course, it was a number two!
After we got Will cleaned up, his demeanor changed completely. All of a sudden, he went from being sad to see Gon Lu leave to seeming happy to be with us. It was as if he all at once recognized that we were his parents, his forever parents, and he liked that, so he relaxed. He explored the hotel room and found all the presents Bill had spread around the room at his level on purpose for him to find.
Our first outing as a family took place that afternoon when we went for a walk in a park right outside the hotel. Will was pretty happy on the walk, but it was fairly cold, so we made it a short one. On our way back into the lobby, Will started pointing down the hall and screaming “Beep beep.” Our hotel was connected to a very high-end mall, not at all like the one we went shopping in the day before. Near the entrance to the mall on the other side of the lobby were two very high-end cars on display, a Ferrari and a Maserati. Bill and I couldn’t believe he even saw them so far away, but he did, and he was freaking out! We took him over, and he immediately ran up to the Ferrari, apparently his car of choice, and literally started to hug it! Bill, being the car aficionado that he is, said, “Now I know he was meant to be my son.” Clearly, Will loved cars as much as his baba. The representative watching the cars was so moved by Will’s enthusiasm, he unlocked the doors and let Will climb into the driver’s seat. Will had the biggest grin on his face as he started to move the steering wheel back and forth. Boy, will we be in trouble when he turns sixteen!
During our first family dinner that evening in the hotel restaurant, we witnessed Will’s voracious appetite for the first time. He was thrilled with his meal. The hotel had an amazing buffet. This being his first dinner with us, and knowing that he likely had had limited and very structured meals, we of course gave him anything he wanted. We were told by our adoption agency that due to limited access to food, kids may hoard food or eat a lot at first. Well, he never became a hoarder of food, but that night it appeared that he had an endless appetite. We literally sat at the table for two hours while Will kept eating. Obviously, we tempered our eating after that night.
After settling in our room for the night, we got Will in his pajamas and got ready for bed. Bill had his first alone time with him when I left to take a bath, something I like to do when my tired bones are hurting after a long day. They sat on the bed and watched Rio, a 3D computer-animated film about a blue macaw named Blu who traveled to Rio de Janeiro to mate with a feisty female macaw named Jewel. They watched the entire movie together, and Will seemed to really enjoy it. I came out of the bathroom to find them head to head in bed watching. After that, we looked at a book, cuddling in bed together.
Not knowing what kind of a sleeper Will was, I thought it safer to put him in the crib for sleeping. I didn’t want him to wake up and get into something unsafe while we were sleeping or have him fall out of bed and hit his head. It was then that we discovered he likely had significant sleep apnea, when we noticed he snored very loudly, at times worked hard to breathe, using his accessory muscles, and had long pauses that appeared as if he had stopped breathing. Because I knew children with achondroplasia were at high risk for this, it didn’t surprise me. Of course, it made me more anxious seeing it and not knowing if this level of difficulty breathing was the norm for him, but there was not much we could do. If he had lived for the last three years without a sleep study and CPAP, he should be fine for another week until we get home, I tried to reassure Bill and myself. We would just have to keep an eye on him and get him evaluated after we got back to Houston.
The next morning, Will woke up smiling. He was standing up in the crib with his hands over the railing, ready to have something to eat, and that was it. He was totally part of the family and ready to go. That day, when Will was up, dressed, and comfortable, Bill and I went with Sondra to the State Department to finish the paperwork for Will’s Chinese passport, and we were told it would take exactly three days, no more, no less. With the bureaucratic part of the trip out of the way with unexpected ease, we now had the time to do some sightseeing in Will’s birth city.
The Old City of Hohhot is incredible, with architecture from thousands of years ago and ancient Buddhist temples. Many people didn’t wear traditional Mongolian garb, but tourists like us did. There were people outside the temples with all different sizes of traditional Mongolian outfits, most notably “deels,” which were very large, colorful overcoats, often held tight by silk belts and ornate buckles. They used them for tourist photos. They dress you up and then take your picture as a memento. Of course, we did it! It was actually a lot of fun, and Will looked absolutely adorable in his outfit!
We also went to the Inner Mongolian Museum, where there were thousands of artifacts from all of Mongolian history. I loved the Genghis Khan statue. He was one of the most deeply feared personalities of all time. He created the largest contiguous land empire in human history, and being there, where he had been, was pretty amazing.
We enjoyed our three days in our son’s birthplace, but when we received Will’s passport we were ready for our final stop on our journey. We needed to travel to Guangzhou, the third-largest city in China, to obtain medical clearance and secure a visa for Will’s trip home to the United States with us. Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, is a port city about twenty-five hundred miles south of Hohhot. The three-and-a-half-hour flight would be Will’s first time on an airplane, and we worried how he would do. He surprised us both—he was calm, happy, and enjoyed watching a movie on the iPad! I hoped this was a glimpse of how he would be on the long seventeen-hour trip home to Houston.
Guangzhou was very interesting. The climate was considerably warmer than Hohhot, where the temps never really reached above freezing, and the city itself was much more Americanized, with Western favorites like McDonald’s and Starbucks. Will picked out his first pair of sunglasses during a shopping trip to the mall, and he looked very cool.
We were now in a hotel with many people from all over the United States who were also in China to adopt a child. We met two other families who were also adopting with our agency. Our adoption guide here, Sam, took all three families out sightseeing and to lunch. He organized all our medical appointments on the same day so we could travel together. Once Will’s medical clearance was granted, we needed to secure him a visa for travel to the United States. Again, we were told that would take five days, no more, no less. The process was very structured and organized in China. On the day we received his visa, we had a little celebration in the room and gave Will a mini American flag. As soon as we landed on U.S. soil, he would become an official citizen of the United States.
Bill and I were hopeful that he would be a pretty good flyer as he had been so well-behaved on the flight from Hohhot to Guangzhou. It was a long trip back home and we had heard that likely there would be other adoptive families on the plane, so if he wasn’t, not to worry—we wouldn’t be alone.
Our journey home was another seventeen plus hours. First, we had a small flight from Guangzhou to Beijing. We had a layover in Beijing, and then it was Beijing to San Francisco, and then Houston.
We had a little customs issue trying to get out of Beijing, due to the camera crew’s camera battery, as it was flagged as suspicious. For some reason, they wouldn’t let us proceed to the gate, and we feared at first it had something to do with Will’s adoption. A small part of me couldn’t rest until I knew we were on U.S. soil with our son. Security let Will and me go, but not Bill. The production company had asked Bill if he would mind having one of their bags put under his name to help defray the cost. His generosity, however, made him part of the group of production people that now couldn’t leave the country without getting the battery issue resolved. So, Bill told me to go ahead just in case he didn’t make the flight. I, of course, had no intention of getting on a plane without him, but to keep things calm, I agreed.
Fortunately, Bill and our cameraman figured out and solved the battery problem and, literally as they were closing the doors, they made it to the plane.
The flight from Beijing to San Francisco was the longest leg. I thought if Will could handle that flight, we would be fine! To our pleasant surprise, we found out Will was a natural flier, as if he had been flying his entire life. He was the perfect gentleman, sitting in his seat as the flight attendant served him lunch on his little tray. We had given him an iPad to play with, and he had loved that, too, wearing his headphones like an old pro. We watched Finding Nemo on the plane, and to this day that movie is a favorite in our house.
On the jet in San Francisco, Will finally started getting irritable, and then he let loose. I really couldn’t blame him; I was ready to have a meltdown by that point, too. He screamed for the first forty minutes of the flight. We felt bad for all the other passengers, and I kept apologizing as we tried to walk him down the aisle to calm him down. Being a new parent, I felt terrible. Now, however, I have more perspective and realize that all parents have been there at some point.
We made it, finally. The last leg seemed interminably long, as you can imagine. To say it was great to be home was an understatement. I couldn’t wait to get in the door, as we were all exhausted. Will and I had slept a little bit on one flight or another, but Bill hadn’t, so he could barely stand. We were both really glad that my mom and dad met us at the airport. They were thrilled to pieces to meet Will! They had a surprise party prepared at our house with balloons, presents, and a cake for a “birthday party” for Will’s welcome home. Will had just turned three a couple of weeks earlier, and we finally got to celebrate his birthday as a family!
When we opened the door, Will saw all the decorations and his excitement was uncontrollable, despite how tired he was. One look at the cake, and he was all in. He loved his Thomas the Tank Engine scooter, as well. As for Bill, suffice it to say that he was passed out cold on the couch fifteen minutes later.
Bill and I give Will all the credit in the world. What a trouper he turned out to be. I think he was numb for a while, completely dumbfounded that he was in this new life with this house full of toys and balloons. After our little party, Bill and I took him up to his new room and showed him his bed and his stuff. We stayed in there with him the first night. We put him in his bed, and then we slept on the trundle that went underneath it.
For his first night, we were all in there with him, and it was just the greatest feeling new parents could have. We were together as a family and we were home.
• • •
ALTHOUGH IT SEEMED destined to be, adopting a child from India wasn’t easy. Will’s adoption process had taken just under a year from start to finish, so we hoped for a similar experience with our daughter. Unfortunately, different countries work at different paces. And the delays we experienced with the U.S. Customs and Immigration Department and the Indian government, which were very common, pushed back our trip to India to get our daughter. In the end, we left for India after sixteen months of waiting.
As our travel date approached, we received one of our very infrequent updates about little Nidhi. She was very small. Even for a Little Person, she was small, and I was becoming more and more alarmed that she might be severely malnourished. At two years old, she measured only twenty-three and three-quarter inches in length and weighed just fifteen pounds. She was well under the third percentile from a “failure to thrive” perspective, which meant that she was in the lowest 3 percent of the population in terms of growth.
It could have been a combination of genetics and her dwarfism that exacerbated her diminutive stature. My Indian friends tell me it is typical of girls from India to be extremely petite, but I also was concerned that being in an orphanage with limited resources, malnourishment might have been a large component. She had been brought to the orphanage when she was only a week old, we knew very little of her environment or orphanage, and we had been warned that often infants and children in orphanages have very poor nutrition, which can contribute to growth delays. In fact, the rule of thumb for international adoption is to expect developmental and growth delays. Of course, multiple factors other than nutrition can influence this, but in any case, time was of the essence.
Will was going with us. He had arrived on March 14, 2013, seven months earlier, and he was now a seasoned traveler. So, on October 12, Bill, Will, our nanny, Kate, five members of our television crew, and I boarded a flight for Mumbai via Newark International Airport.
We landed in Mumbai the night before Bill’s birthday, Sunday, October 13. He was about to receive his gift, a brand-new daughter. We had been in Guangzhou, China, for my birthday, and now we were in India for Bill’s birthday. Birthday gifts didn’t get better than this. Unfortunately, we couldn’t actually see our daughter until Monday, as visitation was not allowed over the weekend. On that Sunday, we did just a bit of sightseeing, including a trip to Juhu Beach, a popular tourist spot about twelve miles north of Mumbai on the shores of the Arabian Sea, and had dinner at the hotel the night before our big day. We went to bed exhausted from our trip, but Monday couldn’t come fast enough.
Monday morning found us boarding the large van we had hired with room for everyone who was going with us. We had two cameramen, two executive producers, a field producer for the filming, and three people we had hired in Mumbai—a driver and two security personnel. Bill and I decided Will would stay behind at the hotel with Kate when we went to get Nidhi. He would have his own private meeting as soon as we had his sister with us.
The trip to the orphanage took over an hour, even though it was only seven miles from our hotel. No sooner had we crossed our first bridge, which was almost in sight of the hotel, than we had to pay money to people with guns who wouldn’t let us pass unless we gave them something. The traffic and driving conditions in Mumbai were horrific. Imagine thousands of cars and no traffic rules, and drivers who had little regard for each other, pedestrians, or the livestock that meandered through the streets. Cows received some respect, but everything else was fair game, to be bumped, nudged, scraped, or cut off.
We didn’t spend the entire hour worrying about all the accidents we saw, but we easily could have, as there were so many. We were both nervous and excited about meeting our daughter, whom we would name Zoey Nidhi. We chose the name Zoey as it was one that I loved and was the name that my mother had wanted to give me. Even though that was what I was supposed to be named, my grandma had thought it wasn’t a proper name and insisted my mother name me Jennifer Lynn. Just like with Will, we kept Zoey’s Indian first name as her middle name.
I was more worried about what condition we would find her in. Was she well nourished? Would she be too sick to travel home with us for any reason? Was she walking and talking? How well was she achieving her developmental milestones? She had just had her second birthday a few weeks before we got there. But she had been in this orphanage for quite a long time, and we didn’t know what kind of care she had received. The long months of waiting that we had to endure before this trip weighed on my mind. All I wanted was to get her and take care of her.
The orphanage was on Jail Road, which was no coincidence. The place had been a prison and was still surrounded by the eighteen-foot walls that had protected it then. It was probably in the worst part of town. There was stinky, rotting garbage piled up all along Jail Road. The homelessness was beyond anything I had ever imagined. On the sidewalks right near the orphanage, babies were lying on bedsheets spread right on the sidewalk. Probably every two feet, there was another man, woman, or child, seemingly with nowhere to go.
When we finally got to the orphanage, the van backed into a designated spot. No one but Bill and I got out, thinking the best way to meet the folks at the orphanage, including the head of the facility, was privately. Oddly, the staff there wanted to know where the film crew was! It seemed the adoption agency in the United States might have purposely disclosed that we had a television show, hoping it would motivate the Indian government and the local management of the orphanage to be as diligent as possible with our case, and perhaps hoping, moreover, that the documentary-style filming of our adoption story would benefit other families in the midst of their adoption story if we shined a positive light on the hard-working people within the Indian government helping children find their forever families. So, with the orphanage’s encouragement and approval, we brought some of the crew inside.
The orphanage housed about 150 kids, about two-thirds under the age of seven. For those over the age of seven, the facility served as a rescue home for girls and women who came from situations of abuse. For those seven and under, the facility was a co-ed orphanage. Kids could arrive there within days of being born.
We went into a meeting room where we were introduced to most of the senior staff at the orphanage. It wasn’t long before Zoey was brought in. It was a moment that we will never forget. She was beautiful and much tinier than we had imagined, even though we knew her measurements. This little meeting was supposed to be a first chance to say hello and hold her, but as it turned out, it was pretty high drama. No sooner had she gotten into the room than she started screaming furiously! We took some time trying to soothe her, but nothing was working. I knew this was expected, but it was still so hard to meet our daughter for the first time and feel that there was nothing we could do to comfort her.
Zoey’s caregiver quickly scooped her up and took her to get cleaned up and dressed for her departure, while we went on a tour of the facility, which had its own surprises. It was a compound of old prison buildings, and most of the buildings didn’t even have windows. The buildings had an oppressive and dank feel. The walls were actually moist due to the humidity and no air-conditioning. The facility was understaffed and poorly funded, and it was a miracle that the staff managed to do what they did with the limited resources they had. All the staff except for the teachers were volunteers with Asha Sadan, the women’s charity that started the orphanage. The play yard seemed okay, and the few rooms for arts and crafts had some supplies. The older kids made handbags here that were sold to visitors to raise money for the orphanage.
We were disappointed to find that because Zoey was so small, she was lumped in with all the infants even though she was two. Her nursery had twenty or so cribs and was overseen by three rotating caregivers. Zoey was still being treated like a baby, probably bottle fed and then put back into her crib. Because she was in with this age group, she didn’t get to participate in any toddler activities, such as running around playing with the children her age. She just wasn’t being engaged with in the same way that the other two-year-olds were, due to her small size.
In a way, Bill and I recognized this was probably safer for her, seeing she was so small and underweight, but it was still extremely sad. In Will’s foster facility, he had been with a much smaller group of people. He had also been with other children with special needs, so the level of care had been a lot better. They had a staff physician who addressed issues in the foster facility that didn’t demand emergent care. He had even gotten speech therapy in Mandarin.
We tried to find out as much as we could about Zoey’s health, personality, and background from the staff who had been caring for her for so long. They gave us her medical records, but not a whole lot of other details. We longed for any information about her that would help us to understand and know this lovely little girl, but we were able to find out very little. The staff was very nice, though. All the female caregivers were called “Auntie” by the children. They were responsible for everything: the food, the cleaning, the education, and the general care.
While we were doing the paperwork, we were treated to little sweet dessert balls and a cup of tea. We finished signing the last of the logbooks and left the orphanage with Zoey in Bill’s arms to climb into the van. She yelled all the way to the van, where things actually got worse. We didn’t think she could actually scream any louder, but she proved us wrong. Once inside the vehicle, she got so upset that first she tried to bite Bill, then tried to bite me. Her rage was so intense that she was soaked with sweat. We were happy to be bringing her home with us and at the same time extremely worried about her. Luckily, she finally calmed down and slept the last couple of miles back to the hotel.
When we got back to the hotel suite, we wanted to get Zoey ready to meet Will, but before that, we wanted to give her a quick bath, a change of clothes, and a bedbug inspection. We had had a bedbug scare when we brought Will home from China and didn’t want to make that mistake again. It was a “do not pass go, go straight to the bath” process. Her cries were finally quelled as I became a bit familiar to her. By the time we finished giving her a bath, she was rather attached to me, and she wouldn’t let me put her down.
Next, we brought her into the living area where Will and Kate were playing and waiting for us to return. Will was sitting at the coffee table playing with a toy, ready to meet his sister. At first, he kept a bit of distance so as not to crowd her too quickly. Zoey looked like a deer in headlights, but who wouldn’t? She was surrounded by strangers and had been taken from all she knew. Will hopped off the couch and crouched below her. He leaned in and kissed her foot as he said, “Hi, Ozoy,” his pronunciation of Zoey. It was one of the most endearing things I had ever seen, and in that instant, I knew that our new family was complete. Will was obviously ready to be a big brother!
• • •
DURING ALL THE joy and excitement of bringing a new daughter into our family, I started having a frightening medical issue. I was experiencing very heavy vaginal bleeding. I assumed it was related to a medical procedure I had undergone the previous month, a dilatation & curettage (D&C) for a molar pregnancy, a nonviable pregnancy, which needed medical intervention. A molar pregnancy begins the way a normal pregnancy does, but instead of a fetus forming in the uterus, a ball of cells begins to grow. It was the first time we had ever gotten pregnant, but it wasn’t viable, it wasn’t expected, and it required a medical intervention in the form of a D&C.
After the D&C, I was told by the doctors that they believed they had removed all the tissue, and I was good to go. After the pathology report came back as a complete molar pregnancy, we were informed that I would still need to be monitored to make sure my hormones returned to normal levels, and by the time we left for India, I seemed to be problem free and my hormone levels were coming down nicely. Now, with this bleeding, I wasn’t sure what was going on, but obviously I was concerned. It started slowly and then while we were in Mumbai would increase, then decrease, making it difficult to make a decision about whether I should be really alarmed. Given my short stature, any significant loss of blood can affect me greatly.
When I told Bill about it, he was quite upset and worried about me. I tried to put his mind at ease, but the truth was that I was frightened. The bleeding was increasing, and we were in a remote city with poor health-care access should something more serious develop. I knew better than anyone that the last thing any of us wanted was for me to get a blood transfusion in India, where the screening process is not as extensive as it is in the United States. We were only in Mumbai a few days when this all began.
During our flight to New Delhi to complete the adoption process for Zoey, I really started to feel as if I was hemorrhaging. It was almost as if moving around more caused the bleeding to get worse. We were already overwhelmed with the process of meeting Zoey and getting her settled, as well as traversing this new country to get her documents. It seemed almost unreal that I might have a real health crisis on top of everything else that was going on. And yet the bleeding persisted and then started to get more serious.
The two-hour flight was Zoey’s first airplane ride, and amazingly she did great. She didn’t want to be in anybody’s lap, she just wanted to be alone in her seat. I was still bleeding, starting to feel more lightheaded and nauseated. Coincidentally, my boss, Dr. Stephen Welty, the head of neonatology at Texas Children’s Hospital, happened to be in New Delhi at this very same time on a two-week trip for medical work he was doing with a local governmental hospital. We were supposed to meet for fun when we got to New Delhi, but instead I ended up calling him for a recommendation on an OB/GYN he might be working with at the hospital whom I could see. He was unbelievably helpful and connected me with a gynecologist, who gave me something to stop the bleeding. It was a clotting agent that slowed the bleeding down, but it didn’t arrest it completely.
I got in touch with my gynecologist in Houston, who told me to get home immediately. When I explained that I needed to stay and finish Zoey’s adoption and then return home, she insisted that it was urgent for me to return to Houston on the next possible flight. We estimated that my blood loss was already significant. Of course, my brain went to the worst-case scenario at this point, and I became worried that if for some reason I became unconscious due to more blood loss and shock, the people treating me would not know how to care for me—providing medications and fluids, and more important, securing an airway and intubating me, because I have a truly difficult airway due to my cervical spine structural issues and anatomy.
This couldn’t be happening, and yet it was. For the last few days, I had been managing to convince myself that the bleeding would be fine during the times when it slowed down, but then out of nowhere, it would pick back up again. But it was after I spoke to my doctor in the States that the serious nature of the situation really hit me.
The juxtaposition of a major health scare and a joyful bonding experience with Zoey was making my head spin. The thought of leaving my newly united little family to head home without them was heartbreaking and almost unimaginable. Because it was so uncertain what was going on and whether the bleeding would continue, I really struggled with the decision. I truly couldn’t imagine leaving them on the other side of the world. Bill couldn’t leave, as Zoey still had to finish up her adoption and secure her visa. If I left, I wanted to take Will with me so that Bill would only need to concentrate on one child, but again, he pointed out that, heaven forbid, if something happened to me en route back to the U.S., who would take care of Will? He was right. So, after much deliberation, we agreed I needed to go home and seek medical attention.
I gave Bill my power of attorney, so he could finish up Zoey’s adoption, and arranged my flight home as soon as possible, trying to keep my panic level in check.
Meanwhile, that same Wednesday, Bill took Zoey for her medical clearance exam, which was required by the U.S. government for entrance into the United States. Everything was good, but final clearance would still take another two days, the amount of time it took for the TB test results.
Saying good-bye to Will, Zoey, and Bill was not at all easy. I felt some ease knowing Bill had our nanny, Kate, with him to help out and also the support of the film crew. At the airport in New Delhi, it was a difficult good-bye, but we both knew it was time to get into survival mode and get through this. We had to for our children and for each other.
The whole situation was nothing I had expected to be dealing with, and was almost surreal. I was leaving my husband and two kids, one of whom I had only had for two days, in a third world country for a medical emergency. But, I think both of us knew there was nothing we could do to change the situation, and now we had to focus all our energy on getting through this as quickly as possible.
I was very appreciative that at least I wasn’t traveling completely alone. Because we were filming this trip, we had two security personnel with us, and one of them accompanied me back to the U.S. We discussed a plan for him to carry out if indeed the worst happened, and I lost consciousness during the flight. I actually had a note in my pocket, telling the flight crew what to do to secure my airway and prevent further injury to my spine, as my neck fusion made things more complicated.
Bill told me months later that he had tracked my entire journey on his phone, never sleeping the entire night and making sure any plane I was on was not diverted, which could mean a medical emergency for me. It still brings tears to my eyes when I think of him in India with our children, staying up all night to track my flights to be sure I wasn’t in danger. I can’t exactly explain in words what his love means to me. It is actions like these, gestures that I might not even know about at the time, that make Bill the incredible partner that he is, and I love him for it.
The fourteen-hour flight to Newark was uneventful, thank goodness. I was uncomfortable for much of the trip, so I was really relieved when we landed. Between connections, I called Bill to let him know I was okay, and he told me he was making out just fine with Zoey and Will, although everybody missed me.
Unfortunately, our flight from Newark to Houston was delayed. But fortunately, my bleeding had stabilized somewhat. When I finally got to Houston, my parents picked me up at the airport and took me to see my doctor, where I immediately had a CAT scan, an MRI, and some other tests. I was relieved to be back in the United States and was hoping for reassuring news to pass along to Bill overseas.
The news was not good, though. I had a malignancy in my uterine wall, the direct result of the molar pregnancy. It was this tumor that was causing the bleeding. But the news was far worse than that. The problem was that the cancer had already spread to my lungs, and I needed to start aggressive treatment right away.
Again, there was no time to waste on self-pity or misery, but rather it was time to intensify the survival mode I had already been in. For a few seconds, I did wonder how this could be happening to me. I felt like I was in the middle of a very bad dream, but all I could do was keep moving forward. It seemed crazy to me that I had been in India two days ago, having just adopted our daughter, and now I was home without my family and diagnosed with a stage 3 cancer that required intensive treatments immediately. My gynecologist immediately referred me to a gynecological oncologist, and I met Dr. Concepcion Diaz-Arrastia, who has turned out to be not only a talented oncologist and surgeon but a dear friend.
When I told Bill, he took the news as well as he could. I think it was still unbelievable to both of us in different ways. Life had turned upside down on what felt like every front in a matter of a few days.
Somehow Bill managed to complete the rest of Zoey’s adoption in three days, possibly the fastest international adoption ever. He had a little hangup getting her visa, as they weren’t able to get to the U.S. embassy in New Delhi until Friday afternoon. The embassy told him they would probably not be able issue the visa until Monday. Bill wasn’t willing to accept that, explaining how urgent it was that he get back to the United States and that he was willing to wait all day for the visa. His stubbornness paid off. Even though the embassy was officially closed, with the monitors turned off and the lights out, he left there with Zoey’s visa.
There was also a little trouble at the airport. Someone from the Indian army stopped Bill as he was going through customs, wondering why he had a little Indian girl with him. Apparently, there was concern that Bill might have been trying to smuggle Zoey out of the country. Even though Bill pulled out a document that showed Zoey was his daughter, they unzipped all his bags and detained him, while both kids were crying and screaming. I know it wasn’t easy for him. Finally, a supervisor walked over to see what was happening, examined Bill’s documents, and concluded he was legitimate. It wasn’t surprising that this happened to Bill, as there are not many international adoptions out of India. Bill was extremely grateful when he was finally aboard the flight to the U.S. I was certainly glad to have him and the kids home.
• • •
DECIDING ON THE hospital where I would be cared for put me in a bit of a quandary. The hospital where I worked, Texas Children’s Hospital, had recently opened the Pavilion for Women, a comprehensive women’s care hospital within our children’s hospital. My oncologist, Dr. Arrastia, was the chief of gynecological oncology there, but also continued to care for patients at the other adult hospitals in the area. Although my oncologist worked at Texas Children’s Hospital’s Pavilion for Women (my hospital), they were not yet equipped to administer chemotherapy to adults, so I was supposed to have all my treatments—both inpatient and outpatient—at Methodist Hospital down the street. However, Dr. Arrastia talked with the executives at Texas Children’s, and they ultimately made an exception to care for me at my own hospital because of my size and airway issues. Methodist only had adult-sized surgical and airway equipment, and Texas Children’s was also much more adept at managing my difficult airway for surgery. My greatest relief was that my anesthesiologist was someone I worked with all the time and knew well.
Because initially the chemotherapy wasn’t stopping my tumor’s growth, we decided I needed to have surgery, a total abdominal hysterectomy, which took place on October 30 at my hospital, Texas Children’s Hospital. I was more nervous about surgery than the chemotherapy or the cancer. I knew I had a difficult airway, and I had not been intubated since my hip replacements during pediatric residency more than ten years earlier.
Fortunately, the surgery went well. My anesthesiologist was able to intubate me without complication, and Dr. Arrastia felt the removal of my uterus was very straightforward, no surprises. I was in the hospital a few days and then my chemo regimen began almost immediately, as I still needed to treat the nodules in my lungs. The hormone levels in my blood that tumors secrete had been so high that we knew my cancer was aggressive.
I was back to going to the hospital weekly for chemo, with alternating levels of treatment. One week would be on an outpatient basis, in which I would be hooked up to an IV for four to six hours. The following week, I would stay overnight at the hospital for my treatment.
Because before and after surgery, the beta HCG numbers—the hormone markers used to test for pregnancy and my type of cancer—weren’t going down at the rate we were hoping for, and I wasn’t initially experiencing as many side effects as I should have, Bill had an epiphany, and it had to do with the dosing of my chemotherapy. To his way of thinking, I wasn’t getting the proper dosage, because even though I was a Little Person, I had close-to-average-size organs for adult maturity, specifically my liver. My organs just happened to be packed into a tighter space. I was getting dosed, though, based on my weight and height, which is typical for chemotherapy dosing. The risk of arbitrarily increasing the dose too much is that chemotherapy is toxic and that could be life threatening to me.
Bill and Dr. Arrastia discussed the theory, and they agreed that I should be getting a higher dose than was normal for someone of my height and weight. Instead, Dr. Arrastia based the calculation on my liver size. His theory turned out to be correct. As Dr. Arrastia increased my dosage, my hair started falling out and my numbers went down, after a little over three months eventually reaching zero!
To add to the stress during all of this, Bill and I had given our nanny some time off to aid us in the bonding process with Zoey. Even before my medical emergency, we had decided we would give her a four- to six-week hiatus when we got home from India with Zoey, just as we had done when we brought Will home from China. When you adopt any child older than an infant, it’s important to minimize the number of people in the household those first weeks to keep the child from becoming confused. When children grow up in an orphanage, they are accustomed to caregivers coming in and out in shifts, so we needed both Will and Zoey to understand that we were their parents, not caretakers, and we were never going anywhere. This helps them to develop a secure and loving bond with their new parents. The process had worked beautifully with Will, and we wanted to do the same with Zoey, despite the medical whirlwind of treatments that I was experiencing. We kept the camera crew away, and we even limited the amount of time the grandparents could visit. Even though the relatives thought we were crazy, everybody respected our decision.
Given the fact that I was undergoing weekly chemotherapy and recovering from major surgery, the decision to give Kate time off was no longer as easy as originally planned, but we were also fully committed to bonding as a family unit during this crucial time of transition for Zoey. To say it was overwhelming would be an understatement! Bill became super dad and super husband!
Bill and I, as a result, were beyond exhausted. Bill was bringing me back and forth to the hospital for treatment, all the while taking care of Zoey and Will. My parents helped out a lot, and when we felt it was appropriate to bring Kate back into the fold, we felt some relief. However, Bill, who was and always is the rock of our family, was at the same time enduring a herniated disc in his back—the result of a combination of scoliosis and an injury he had sustained while working out at the gym—that would eventually require surgery.
I would be horribly sick for five or six days after a chemo session, but I still had the strength to hug the kids, tuck them in, and tell them how much I loved them. We even moved them both downstairs to the master bedroom so it would be easier for us to care for them or mobilize them if I needed to urgently go to the ER. I’m not sure exactly how, but in the end we made it through my post-op complications, weekly chemotherapy, and the challenges in bonding with Zoey.
I officially went into remission on January 16, 2014, the date I was declared cancer free. My prognosis was excellent. I had a 10 to 15 percent chance of the cancer coming back in the first year, and if it didn’t, the chances of it coming back were only 3 percent.
All in all, the year was an unbelievable one for Bill and me. We adopted two incredible children, Will and Zoey, and I beat cancer. At the time of this writing, February 2015, I am thirteen months cancer free, putting me in the 3 percent category.
While we began 2013 as a couple, we ended 2013 as a family of four, gathered together from far-reaching countries and now home. The journey to get here was unlike anything we could have predicted. We couldn’t possibly have known what was ahead, both good and bad, and we wouldn’t trade any of our experiences for the world. We look ahead with this same mindset, ready to embrace and appreciate all that life has in store.