After only about a day of enjoying the summery temperatures and afro-inducing humidity I mentioned earlier, it seems that the weather along with our luck has taken a turn for the worse.
Liam’s daily nebulizer treatments and medication have not seemed to improve his bronchitis and the doctor wants to try some additional medication. Aside from the typical concerns any parent has over a sick child, Jerry and I are experiencing a few new ones. First our doctor is the Hotel doctor. We’re not exactly sure what to make of this? What are her credentials? And if you are a doctor, why the hell are you working in a hotel? To be fair we know nothing about doctors who choose to make their living in the hospitality industry. The more we thought about it, the only point of reference we could come up with was Doc from The Love Boat and he wasn’t a very convincing doctor and an even less convincing lady’s man. You’re probably wondering why all the silliness, just ask what her credentials are? Well, we did, and even translated into English we have no idea what any of it means. Getting serious we decide she is our best option and likely a perfectly good one. After all the White Swan is the hotel that 90% of adoptive families stay at before returning to the US. We are assured she has treated thousands of children and many with much more serious illnesses. Our goal for now needs to be getting him healthy enough for travel back to the US on Saturday and if need be, direct to our pediatrician.
Our second new area of concern is trying to decipher what these Chinese drugs are all about? In addition to what he has been taking orally, our translator tells us that the doctor wishes to give him antibiotic injections twice a day. When we question the type of antibiotic they will use, she shows us the box. It is nothing we are familiar with and their attempts to compare it to other drugs we might know fail miserably. We also start throwing around names of random antibiotics that we do know, but to no avail. After several more rounds of “name that antibiotic” we take a new approach and come away with a reasonable understanding of why this is necessary.
They also decide on another medication to add to the regimen and we have no objections. However our sense of nervousness returns when the nurse whips out her pestle and mortar adds a little of this and a dash of that and then delivers us a zip lock of very neatly folded wax paper packets of powder. Yes, we are very far from home!
All jokes aside, while Liam’s bronchitis sounds terrible, his appetite and activity level are great, so we are hopeful with a little TLC and good care he will shake this off quickly.
Our other bit of bad news came in the form of some critical paperwork that is MIA. We’ve had an ongoing challenge with getting a document called a VISA 37 to its final destination here to the US Consulate in Guangzhou. This document is required for Liam to be issued his VISA and leave the country. According to US immigration, the issuer, the document has been sent here twice. We knew this already, as we had to beg them to resend it before we left. As of yesterday our agency could not get confirmation of receipt and asked us to call the consulate. We did and received the bad news that they still don’t have it. All is not lost as we have three more days to get this situation fixed. A Consulate employee named Roy says he’s on it and has put in an emergency request to US Immigration. When we followed up today, Roy said he still didn’t have it and when we asked what we should do, he said “keep your fingers crossed”. Not exactly confidence building. Our translator has suggested a call to our Congressperson, which we will do as soon as things open for business tomorrow in the US. The thought of extending our stay here with our neighbors the peacocks, the monkey and the ostrich is freaking me out to put it mildly.
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