On the Path to Healing

As the scent of pine remains in our house, I am reminded our family experienced an amazing Christmas. It was such fun to watch the kids excitement. Sidney is obviously too young to fully understand the concept, but it did not take long to get into the spirit of diving into a pile of packages. Eli was quick to follow up with his standard line of, "you know gifts are not the real meaning of Christmas." We had several occasions to experience this. I am happy to report we made it through four family Christmases unscathed and will round out the season with our last family Christmas today. Thirty people will converge on my father-in-law's house, chaos erupts, and we will have a great time!

Part of this season has been spent thinking about this coming week. Sidney will have surgery on Thursday, Jan, 7th, in Iowa City. This surgery will separate the webbing between two fingers as an outpatient procedure. Our surgeon let us know they will call with times the night before, but she will likely start surgery around 7am. Good thing mommy likes coffee, because we will have to be there around 5:30am. If all goes according to plan, surgery will take about 3 hours. With an army of family, friends, fellow adoptive parents, and fellow church members praying, we are very optimistic about the days ahead.

Separating Sidney's fingers involves taking a skin graft from a donor site on her upper thigh which will be used to cover the inside area between the two webbed fingers. A cast will cover the full length of her arm, to prevent it from slipping off her small arm. We are unsure of what the skin graft will entail as the tissue from the donor site is quite deep. This depth aids in the healing process.

When I look at Sidney's hands I am quickly reminded how differently her hands might have grown without surgical intervention. This particular procedure would not have been available to Sidney in the orphanage. Under the governments medical care, a few procedures are covered. For example, procedures 1-25 are available, leaving anything else up to a person to pay privately. Obviously, funding a major surgery is out of the question for many people. This is well known by the average Chinese person, so when Americans are spotted with special needs children the reaction is many times very positive. Sidney is only one example of socialized medicine. Why, again, are we begging for socialized medical care in the United States?


I asked the hand surgeon what happens to a hand with webbed fingers without surgical treatment. She advised Sidney's two webbed fingers would continue to grow at different rates, causing the hand to become disfigured. This is also true on the other hand which does not have webbing but bone growing incorrectly over the growth plate. Without correction, the base of her finger would actually grow wider.

This is such a simply thing to do which will completely change Sidney's life. We could not be prouder to be the parents facilitating this care!