It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Haiti!!

The MD released Brent to travel today! He said with antibiotics, sufficient pain meds, etc. he should be able to travel. I wish you could have seen the big grin on his face when the doctor said it was OK. I'm so thrilled! It's made my whole day! We'll have to be careful because he still can't lift too much and he can't stand or walk for very long. But we'll be together as a family.

It's been an amazing day for another reason. If you haven't read the blog post from November 27th called "KohlBabySweetStars" you'll want to read that before you finish this. I received the following email today from Kohl's mommy, Clarissa:

"I just thought you would like to know that I was having a conversation with Kohl this morning about this little black boy that he says, "lives really far away".
"Him is 4 yrs. old like me", and "him has no hair". He also apparently eats lots of "ice cream".
"Him has a baby sister", and she has no hair, and she is "really little".
"He was a great boy." said Kohl.
Well, I had your blog pulled up because I was reading it, and I pulled Kohl up on my lap to show him the picture of Lexi and Nathan. He said with real, sincere excitement, "Hey, that's the girl I saw with no hair!" (meaning Nathan)
I thought that was really cool. And Kohl has been known for getting boys and girls confused based on their hair. (for example, the little boy from Jungle Book......Kohl thinks he is a girl because he has long hair)
I honestly think Kohl knew Lexi from Heaven. I thought you would enjoy that.
Cliss"

I do believe that children are closer to God than the rest of us (thus "out of the mouths of babes"). I also believe these are OUR kids. We just knew when we saw their pictures. They were the first referral we received and we really didn't ned to go any further. We've moved pretty confidently forward since we found them, with the feeling that this was right and it would all work out in the end.

Thank you again, KohlBabySweetStars, for reminding me to LISTEN and for being sure about what you know. I'm so excited for you, BabyPrincessPaige and Lexi and Nathan to play together.

Let's hope that it's not in 2 years ('cause that's when she'll be "4 years old like you")!






(Kohl in 2005 wearing some PJs I brought back for him from Singapore. He's such a cute little bug!)

Why Does This Take So Long?

Many people ask why it takes so long to bring a child home from Haiti. I've added a section in the lower right corner that gives an overview of all the steps and the timeline. These times are all in the "ideal" range. They can definitely take longer than this.

The whole process takes at least 12 months, and hopefully less than 24 months.

Hope this helps answer some questions.

All-Time Favorite

Once upon a time there were these two carrots. One was an adventuresome little carrot and one was a shy little carrot.

One day the Adventuresome Little Carrot said, 'Shy Little Carrot, there's a whole big world outside our carrot patch and we don't even know what it is! Let's go exploring!!"

The Shy Little Carrot said, 'I don't know, man... it looks kinda scary..."

But the Adventuresome Little Carrot said, 'Come on! Let's go!"

So they HOPPED out of their carrot patch and they hopped and they hopped and they hopped and they hopped.

Pretty soon they came to a freeway! Big trucks going one way! Screaming semis going the other! The Adventuresome Little Carrot thought THIS WAS HEAVEN!! So he watched and he watched... and he waited and he waited... and at just the right time....

ZOOM!!

Ran across the road to the other side!

WHAT... A.... RUSH!!

He turned back to his friend and said, 'Shy Little Carrot! Shy Little Carrot! Come on, man, you can do it!"

And the Shy Little Carrot said, 'I don't know, man... it looks kinda scary...". But he watched and he watched... and he waited and he waited... and at just the right time....

SPLAT!!

Carrot salad.... all over the freeway.....

So they called the little carrot hospital and they sent the little carrot ambulance and they scooped up the Shy Little Carrot and they put him in the carrot ambulance and took him to the carrot hospital and he was in carrot surgery for hours...

and hours...

Finally, the little carrot surgeon came out and said, "Adventuresome Little Carrot... I have some news about your friend. He's going to live, but.... he's going to be a vegetable for the rest of his life."

So Long... Farewell...

My last day at my job was today. I've been at that company for over 9 years. I will miss the friends and comaraderie of my coworkers. I've been some fabulous people and made some longtime friends. As with most things in life, it's the people that matter.

On the Brent update...we go to the urologist on Monday and one of the things we'll find out is if Brent can travel. Given the kidney infection he's been fighting and everything his body has been through, we're not sure if it's safe for him to be in the Land of Typhoid, etc. If he's just not well enough, we'll have to postpone the trip until April, which is the next time our orphanage is sending a group down.

It's maddening that something so tiny could disrupt our lives so much and cause Brent so much agony. I don't want this speck of sand to get in the way of our ability to hug our kids.

One of Brent's friends said that it's too bad kidney stones aren't worth something - like pearls, for example. There's an irritant that gives something back. At least then there'd be a point to all this. We could save them - we'd practically have a necklace by now. His friend said, 'Then he could have given the stone to you for a Christmas present."

That brings a flood of other potential conversations flowing through my head...

"Look at the ring Brent gave me?"

"Oh! It's lovely! Is that a kidney stone?"

"Yes, he made it himself!"

I'll stop there... enough said.

There sure are a lot of things going on right now. Sick husband. Job Change. Trip to Haiti. Brother getting married 3 days after we return.

12 days.

Where Do We Go From Here

He's out of the hospital again after pumping some good antibiotics into him. We have no idea at this point where THE stone is. We also have no idea if we're going to be able to make our trip. If this hasn't cleared up in the next couple of days we will have to start making adjustments to our trip plans. I know Nichole is taking a group down in April. I'd hate to push to then - this trip is our Christmas and we've really been looking forward to it.

2 days left at work at my current job. 1 week until I start my new job. 14 days until I get on a plane to see my babies.

Come on, Kidney Stone! Time to move on to other things.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

It's more than a little sad when you walk back into the ER and the nurses know your name. It's like our own warped version of "Cheers" but with kidney stones and Brent's the only one drunk (and that's only after the pain medicine finally kicks in).

Similarly, when we ended up being admitted to the MedSurg floor again (third time in 8 days), all I could say to the nurses was "We're Baa-ack". He's had very good care from the nurses and the doctors here. That's at least a plus.

He's got a kidney infection and that caused some pretty severe pain that we couldn't keep in check with the oral pain medication he's had. When they figured out the pain was caused by an infection, they decided to admit him. With the stint and stone they said, "These things can go from bad to worse really quickly". So, once again, he's got a beautiful view of the AF Hospital doctor's parking lot. I think that's what that is.

The big picture - at least we're together. At least we only have 15 days until we go to see our kids. At least we're able to get medical help for Brent in this time of pain. I can't imagine how the pilgrims or the pioneers dealt with kidney stones or the like. Bring on the pain mediciations!

We'd planned on having a very quiet Christmas this year, given that all our non-work energies have been focused on Haiti. I don't know why I bother planning things. :) Quiet and calm are two things we haven't had. Maybe next Christmas we'll have the kids with us. And then we'll have a better kind of loud and busy.

15 days

Packages...

I may have mentioned earlier that Utah in January is not a good place to find children's clothing for tropical countries. I've even had trouble finding much on Target/Walmart.com.


Nathan's shorts arrived today. It's also terribly hard to shop for a child you've never seen. The last weight information I received for Nathan was taken when he was less than a month old. Methinks a child at his age may have possibly grown since then. A bit. Or more. There's really no clothing scale to tell me how much a newborn orphan in Haiti may weigh now. Our friend Nichole, (who has actually been to our orphanage and is escorting us on this trip) says that ours is about the "only Haitian orphanage with chubby-cheeked kids". It's still hard to say how big he is now. I ordered the closest I could find to "6 month" since he'll be almost 5 months old when we get there.


Lexi, I got your swimming suit today. It's pink and has flowers and ruffles. The hotel we're staying at has a pool. We can play together there as one of our first family activities.


I ordered the classic "Love You Forever" in French so the orphanage has a copy. I'm also taking our copy in English.




The optimist part of me wants to believe that you'll somehow be FINE with tall, white strangers taking you from the home you have now and smuggling you to a hotel for a week, Lexi. In the daydreams from that side of my mind, we get to snuggle up on the bed and read bedtime stories and I read this to you in English. I dream that even though you don't know the English words I'll be saying, you understand the feeling I'm trying to convey. In that dream, when we leave and the nannies at the orphanage have the same book and they read it to you in French, I dream that you'll possibly remember a bit about those bedtime stories and how safe you felt with Mommy and Daddy. Maybe you won't feel so far away from home. Maybe I won't feel so far away from you.


If, upon arrival in Haiti, reality drags my optimist-self out into an alley and pummels her senseless then at least the nannies will still have the French book. And knowing that I did SOMETHING to try to make things better until you can come home will help me feel not so far away from you.


18 days.

Christmas Comes Early... And Late

This isn't a "stone post"... this is a post for our children.

There are a lot of people that love you already, Lexi and Nathan. By the way, it's 18 days until we get on a plane to come to see you.

One of Brent's coworkers came by yesterday. Her father likes to do something at Christmas time to help others and sent her money to give to us for your orphanage.

Then your cousins called Grandma. The Browns also save their change every year and do something for others with it at Christmas. They want to give it to your orphanage this year.

Two of Mommy's favorite people at work sent money to take to you. (sorry I couldn't make it to lunch, guys!)

I mentioned the money Daddy's coworkers raised with their bake sale last month.

The Rosenlof household is having Christmas in January this year. But then again, we've seen the Spirit of Christmas for the last several weeks in the outpouring of love that has been shown to you.

I know you'll know you're loved by all these family and friends when you get here. Oh, how I wish there was some way to bottle up these feelings and take them to you now.

18 days.

Stone Search 2007

Brent had his 2nd surgery today. They weren't exactly sure what they were going to do when they took him down to surgery. The consent form we signed gave them "permission to do procedure A, B, C or D".

They did try several things and we learned some things as well. The doctor discovered that Brent's urerter has a section where it narrows significantly. It's called a stricture - it's probably scar tissue from a previous stone. It gets so narrow that there's no way a stone like this could pass. They couldn't even move the scopes up to where they needed to because of this stricture.

One thing that comes up when people hear about kidney stones is they have to start sharing what they've had relatives experience or gone through themselves.

"I had a 6 mm stone for 3 months in 1998 and barely felt a thing..."

"My Aunt Edna's cousin had a stone and you wouldn't believe where it got stuck!"

"I'll tell you, I've never wished I could die except for the time I had that kidney stone"

(which, by the way, isn't helpful to tell someone agonizing in pain from a kidney stone at the moment).

The thing that you don't think about is whether it's physically possible for your body to rid itself of a stone of a certain size. And for Brent, all those people who kept telling him it was a "small stone" were only looking at half the picture.

Now we know. And, as GI Joe would say, "Knowing is half the battle".

They put a stint in to try to help expand the area where the stone can't pass. The part I don't get is how the stone is supposed to pass if you're filling up the area with this device, but what do I know.

The other strange physiology thing we learned today was that Brent's kidneys aren't laid out normally. You're supposed to have an area where the ureter meets the different sections of the kidney - where all the areas of the kidney flow into each other. They call this area the "renal pelvis". I prefer to think of it as the "kidney foyer". The business end of the stint is supposed to sit in this "foyer" and wait patiently for someone come calling and take it out. Brent doesn't have a renal pelvis/kidney foyer to speak of. (there's a comment in there somewhere about how even Brent's kidneys aren't very social....) The doctor was quite frustrated because it limited what they were able to do and where they could work. And since Brent's kidneys aren't welcoming enough to have a foyer, the doctors had to wrap the wire end of the stint down into one of the portions of his kidney. The doctor said, 'That might be why the stint hurts him so much." MIGHT be?? Fabulous.

As a note, it's not a good idea to have your mother-in-law only hear the portion of the doctor's post-op consult where he says "Brent doesn't have a pelvis". All sorts of things start to conjure up and she starts to wonder exactly what they were doing in that operating room!

At any rate, we're still in the hospital, and we're trying to keep the pain under control and the other issues that accompany a stint contained and we're trying to get Brent feeling better. He's staying the night again. We'll know more tomorrow how bad it's going to be. The stint was the kiss of death for Brent last time.

If only he'd had the foresight to build a foyer in his kidney....

Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before...

Brent's been admitted to the hospital with a kidney stone. Yeah... he was just discharged today. And yes, we're back in the hospital. Turns out the reason that he's continued to have problems with the pain is that one of the stones was NOT pulverized by the lithotriptor as previously thought. When we came back to the ER today they did a CT scan and it showed the stone, sitting and smiling in the exact same painful spot that it was in on Monday. It didn't show up on any of the X-rays, so they didn't know what was causing his pain previously. And apparently the little bugger didn't move much between Wednesday and this afternoon because Brent felt fairly good.

I don't know if you've seen "Independence Day", but there's a scene where they think they've destroyed the alien ship and then, when the dust clears, it's still sitting there unharmed. I thought of that today when they told us the stone was still present and accounted for. "The target remains. I repeat, the target remains."

On the good side, this means Brent isn't losing his mind - he has been in kidney stone pain this entire time. He was starting to get a lot of skeptical looks from the well-meaning staff. Can't say as I blame them - it should have been pulverized.

On the other good side, at least we found out that there's still a straggling stone NOW instead of in a couple of weeks when we're in Haiti. I shutter to think of what THAT would have been like.

Which reminds me... Brent's first kidney stone came when he was serving an LDS mission in the Philippines. During a typhoon. With no electricity. They did finally get him to a hospital, but once there it took the poor doctors awhile to figure out that their "normal" dose of morphine was "Filipino-sized" and that this large 6' 4" guy MIGHT need a little more than their average patient.

So, hopefully we get this cleared up in time for the trip to Haiti to go off without a hitch.

Hopefully the urologists will have an idea on how to help him.

Hopefully he'll be able to sleep and they'll be able to keep his pain under control.

Thank you to Nate and Al (and John) as well as to our friends at both our jobs for their help and support. I know it hasn't been easy covering for us. We appreciate your help.

How to Deal...

Brent's done with surgery. They brought the lithotripsy machine down to this hospital for him and did a lithotripsy this afternoon. They were able to "pulverize" (doctor's words) both stones. He's still in a fair amount of pain, as they were expecting. They're going to keep him overnight again. Hopefully we'll have a happy Brent again soon. Thank you, Amy and Andrea, for taking such good care of him today.

The doctor that did rounds on the floor last night shared an interesting story. He has a colleague who has adopted two children from China. His daughter was 2 when they brought her home from the orphanage. He said when she got her she started refusing to interact with people who tried to speak to her in Chinese. To this day, she won't speak to Asian people unless they speak English to her. He said they figure it was her young mind's way of dealing with the difficulties of being in an orphanage and the massive change of being brought to the USA.

I've wondered for sometime what Lexi will deal with as she tries to make the transition to her new home. I'm still terribly optimistic that Nathan will be young enough that it will be easier for him. There's still no way to know how long we're going to have to wait to bring them home. I just hope and pray that we're able to help them get through the current wait and the next transition and help them to grow to be strong, productive, confident people.

Status Quo

Well, with the help of my brothers and mom, I've been able to repost many of my lost posts. Sorry that they're out of order now, but at least some of them are restored.

Brent's in the hospital today. He's got the kidney stone from...Cleveland. We've been to the ER three times today and, as they, three strikes and you're IN - the hospital, that is. Since they can't get his pain under control they've admitted him and he'll be staying overnight. He's in so much pain. It's horrible to see him like this. We don't know what's going to happen at this point. The urologists are coming to do rounds in the morning and there's been talk about perhaps trying to get him in for a lithotripsy this week.

Ironically, it was nearly a year ago today that we started Kidney Stone 2006. For those of you that didn't get the T-shirts... too bad. That ordeal extended over 4 weeks, involved 6 trips to the ER and one to InstaCare and 2 surgeries before he was finally able to divorce himself from that stone.

Given that we're supposed to be leaving for Haiti in THREE WEEKS, we can't afford for this one to go like that. He has to be better. He's not going to get on a plane to a 3rd world country in pain like this.

I'm also in the process of changing jobs. I'm been at my current employer for over 9 years and have found another opportunity that I'm going to take. However, this is a lousy time for me to be out. If you don't believe me, just ask the guy that I'm supposed to be training to replace me. Sorry, Eric!

Here's to hoping that THIS, too, shall pass. And soon.

And a Little Child Shall Lead Them....

One of our neighbors came by yesterday with items for our orphanage. She said her children had voluntarily decided to give $20 each of the Christmas money they get from their Grandmother to buy items for our orphanage.

I've been very blessed to be involved in this process of collecting items for our kids. The outpouring of love we've seen has been nearly overwhelming.

God Bless Us, Everyone!

I took Mr. Divot to the vet yesterday. He has to get all sorts of shots so we can board him while we're in Haiti. I guess it's fitting - now we're all sorts of immunized at our house! The vet was quite behind so I sat in the waiting room for quite a while. I could hear the girls at the desk talking about a dog that had been hit by a car the night before and had "shattered his ankle and foot". It was apparent from the conversation that the family really didn't know what to do. They didn't have the funds for the surgery and were trying to decide if they should amputate the dog's leg or put the dog down. They called with questions a few times while I was waiting. It's hard to have something like that happen at Christmas.

The next interesting thing was the arrival of a gentleman I will call Harley Biker Dude. He came in - full beard down to his chest and hair to his shoulders - in his jacket. The ensemble was completed with boots and a beer belly. You can picture him, I'm sure. When he walked in, I immediately though, 'Rottweiler". You just tend to guess people's pets from their appearance. Imagine my surprise when he walked over and picked out a bag of very expensive specialty cat food. He snugged the small bag on his hip and went over to wait his turn in line.

I was very intrigued by Harley Biker Dude. As I watched him, it became apparent that he knew a lot about animals. He asked a woman how old her Pekingese was. I was surprised he correctly identified the breed. Thanks to my years of attending dog shows with my parents as a child, I of course knew immediately that it was a cross between a dog and a toilet brush with a gland problem, as my dad would say. There's just something amusing about Harley Biker Dude saying, 'Pekingese".

Anyway, he got to the front of the line and while the girl was calculating his total, he started asking very detailed questions about this injured dog. She was confused about how Harley Biker Dude would even know anything about the dog but he kept drilling her for information. She finally told him that they weren't sure what they were going to do with the dog. He asked what their options were and she told him. When she said, "surgery, amputation or euthanasia" he became quite agitated and said, 'Don't do anything. I'll get right back to you."

About 10 minutes later, there was a phone call. It was Mr. and Mrs. Harley Biker Dude. It turns out they are the neighbors of the family with the injured pet and they couldn't bear to see the children lose their pet at Christmas. They told the vet that they would pay up to $2500 for the dog's surgery on the condition that the vet never tell the family who was paying for the surgery. "Just call them and tell them the surgery is taken care of and set it up."

Not only was I impressed by their generosity, concern and kindness but I was reminded how often we "judge a book by its cover". I wouldn't have pegged Harley Biker Dude for a Pekingese lover. I also didn't expect him to be willing to so selflessly give so much money for his neighbors. He reminded me to try a little hard to be good and a bit more "Tiny Tim" and less "Scrooge" this year.

Thank you, Harley Biker Dude, wherever you are.

Kids Helping Kids

My friend, Kristy came by today. Her two oldest children did extra chores and earn extra money then used that money to buy things for us to take to the kids in Haiti. I'm so impressed with them and their extra efforts for these other children so far away from the day-to-day craziness of life here in America. I'm grateful today for their example and for their mother teaching them to work and give for others.

I was reminded today of something that was mentioned in our last international adoption training. She was telling us that one of the orphanages they work with in Vietnam will wash and reuse disposal diapers when they get them. They just have nothing and so they have to stretch what they get as far as they can. I can't imagine what that must.... smell like..., not to mention the "absorbent" cores in disposable diapers these days.