The Great Dossier Debacle of January, 2006

Notice, gentle readers (I assume there will be at least one...someday. See how optimistic and shit I am??), the title of this post. I started to name it the Great Dossier Debacle of 2006, but decided not to tempt Fate. If I had named it such, the Universe would have laughed at me and said "So you think this is it for the year, do ya? Well, let's just see what we can do about THAT!" And clearly, not only would there be future debacles, but each new debacle would be suckier than the last. I figure it like this: If I bow down to the Powers That Be, and acknowledge that I have no control, maybe They/It will go easy on me. Sounds reasonable, right??? RIGHT???

Now, on to the complaining (read: detailed, objective explanation of why our dossier did not go to China, as it should have last week).

Tuesday: I turned in our dossier to R., the dossier coordinator for The Agency. She was busy with some translating and it was late in the day, so we did not do a full review. Instead, she glanced over it for any glaring error, and low and behold she found one. As part of my medical information, my doctor had written a note on the back of the form she filled out, stating that I have no active depression at this time, and that said depression will not affect my ability to parent an adopted child. Despite the fact that our social worker, (the lovely, friendly, but apparently young and inexperienced J.) declared that note suffiecient 3 months ago, R. said it need to be on letterhead from my doctor's office. OK. 3 days before the dossier is mailed. I can do that. And off I went.

Wednesday morning: I called the doctor's office to have the letter written. Doctor is not there, nurse is not there. Neither will be in the office today. Spoke with a very nice receptionist, explained what I needed and was assured that all was well. She has adopted before and knows the drill. She'll get it done and faxed to me first thing Thursday. Great. All is well.

Later Wednesday morning: R. calls. G.'s letter from his doctor (and we did already have his in letter format) isn't really good enough. China will want a more detailed explanation of his medical issues. Despite the fact that our social worker, (the lovely, friendly, but apparently young and inexperience J.) declared the letter sufficient 3 months ago. Annoyed now, but it's doable (I think). Also, one of the pictures of the house we sent with our original application (some 6 months ago) seems to be of a closet and could we please take a picture of something else? HUH?? I finally figure out that she is talking about the picture we took of the empty room we plan to use as a nursery. Mind you, it's not a large room, but she's a baby and, in case no one else has noticed, SHE'S NOT HERE YET, hence the emptiness (in more ways than just home decorating). But fine, I have a lovely new camera and printer and that night I commence to cleaning the kitchen and snapping pictures of sparkling sinks, since that is apparently what China would rather see. I only hope they don't think we're planning to have her sleep in the sink. Whatever. I write up some new language for the medical letters and e-mail them to R. for her preapproval. I don't hear back from R. the rest of the day.

Thursday morning: I call the doctor's office about my letter. It's done as promised. Wonderful! R. calls. By the way, the same lanuage I told you 2 days ago was ok to put in letter format...really not. China will also want a more detailed explanation of your depression (infertility, miscarriage, medication, etc) so could you have the doctor write that up too? Please tell me you're joking, I plead. But, alas, it is not so. I call the doctor's office again, to inform them of the latest developments. Needless to say, they are less than overjoyed to hear from me. But Friendly Receptionist says she'll get right on it. Friendly Receptionist is now my bestest friend forever because just a few hours later, she faxes me a wonderful, detailed, descriptive letter.

Thursday afternoon: No word yet from G.'s doctor's office. We're both trying not to kill someone. Anyone. That would certainly require an addendum in the home study. We have until tomorrow morning. Surely, his letter will come in. All the doctor has to do is sign the thing. He's a family friend, of course he'll take the 12 seconds necessary to help make our dream of a child come true.

Friday morning: Did I happen to mention that G. and I are essentially naive schmucks? No letter. Dr. Family Friend didn't sign it last night, and won't be back in the office til Monday.

I just cried. I couldn't help it and I didn't care what the nice attorney across the hall thought. G. was pretty teary-eyed too, which doesn't happen very often. It's been a very long paperchase, and we really just wanted it to end. We were counting on it ending. We needed it to end so we could feel that we had made some progress. That our daughter was even a little bit closer to coming home. Closer to being in our arms. Closer to her family. I know one week or the next shouldn't/doesn't/won't make a big difference in the grand scheme of things, but this whole mess was just one big frustration that didn't have to happen. Sometimes, it seems she is just getting further and further away.