As my last post indicated, Zeke is a waiting child. That means that he either has some special medical need or is considered having a special need due to his age.
In Zeke's case, he has a medical special need. Zeke was born with birth defects which affect his hands. He is actually missing one hand completely and is missing most of the fingers on his other hand. (The politically correct term for all of that is limb differences.)
From what little bit my uneducated brain can gather, there is no real reason for why those changes occurred while Zeke was in utero; modern medicine hasn't figured it out yet. My understanding is that there are a handful of reasons a child can have limb differences including genetic syndromes, amniotic banding, and symbrachydactyly. Based on how the cases present themselves, I think he has the later which is basically a malformation of the hand that occurs early in the pregnancy for reasons yet unknown. Of course, I could be completely off on that...we'll have to wait to see once he gets home.
In general, we don't know exactly what that will mean for Zeke in terms of surgery, usage of his hand, etc.. Generally, most kids/adults who have issues with their upper limbs often forego prosthetics because they just prefer the mobility and dexterity that they have with their actual bodies. We honestly just expect him to be a resilient, happy kid who, according to D, "can still play soccer!" (Of course, we're prepared to deal with more, knowing that there are no guarantees with international adoption but we're optimistic that the concerns with his hands will be minimal.)
We do have pictures but my understanding is that we are not allowed to post them in a public forum like the Internet. We have to be further in the process for that. Can't wait until we get to that place!
4 comments:
The girl I wanted to adopt from Haiti was missing all but one finger on one of her hands. She was four and not chosen yet. Too bad the requirements are what they are. Jasmine has missing and fused fingers and toes from EEC syndrome so we were fine with that. (as well as cleft plate and lip and a cleft in her foot and club foot)
Kathy-Maison actually had a little boy with EEC last spring. He was the first child we inquired about since bringing Conleigh home. We were hoping that maybe since he was special needs, they would have felt like our ages wouldn't have been an issue. But CCAI (one of the agencies who is over Maison now) said that Maison said no. I then emailed Kim to see what she thought and she also said no. We then asked about how we could help financially since he would need multiple surgeries. But by then he had found a family and they were going to wait to have that done until he was home. Sad to say though, out of the 4 Haitian kids we inquired about last spring, one is still on Reece's Rainbow, still waiting.
Kathy-Maison actually had a little boy with EEC last spring. He was the first child we inquired about since bringing Conleigh home. We were hoping that maybe since he was special needs, they would have felt like our ages wouldn't have been an issue. But CCAI (one of the agencies who is over Maison now) said that Maison said no. I then emailed Kim to see what she thought and she also said no. We then asked about how we could help financially since he would need multiple surgeries. But by then he had found a family and they were going to wait to have that done until he was home. Sad to say though, out of the 4 Haitian kids we inquired about last spring, one is still on Reece's Rainbow, still waiting.
It's too bad they aren't flexible when it comes to special needs children. I saw him on another list and asked someone from M. if he was at the O and they told me "no"!!! Weird.
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