Week Forty - Miracles Happen........

When we adopted our daughter from Guatemala ten years ago, we thought that the years of paperwork were behind us.  If anyone ever told us that we needed to do more, I can't recall.  I vaguely recall someone suggesting that re-adopting her in the United States would be a good idea because it would be easier to get copies of her birth certificate.  But I never got around to doing it, and never really thought it mattered at all.

When you adopt a child, you get a whole new birth certificate.  That certificate implies that you have actually given birth to that child.  So Babygirl's current birth certificate lists me as her mother, just as her original birth certificate listed her birth mother.  It also implies that I gave birth to her in Guatemala twenty-three months BEFORE I actually ever met her.  She was granted a visa to come into the US and given a Green Card (which, by the way, is not green). 

When Babygirl was diagnosed with kidney failure, we were told that once she either started dialysis or received a transplant she would qualify for Medicare.  Yes, that is ordinarily for the elderly, and for disabled adults.  But it has one significant exception in that everyone on dialysis qualifies for coverage.  Well, almost everyone.  Illegal immigrants are, rightly enough, excluded.

And it turns out that Babygirl, and her sister Curlygirl, are not US citizens.  And it turns out that since their Green Cards and Visas have expired, they are not exactly legal either.  The fact that I legally adopted them in another country is irrelevant.  I was supposed to file some paperwork with some agency somewhere that would have made them citizens.  With Curlygirl, it really is a matter of simple paperwork because of the type of adoption we did.  With Babygirl, we must do a full re-adoption in the US to make her a citizen.  And until we do, she absolutely cannot get Medicare.  And until we get Medicare, we owe $75 per DAY for dialysis, from August twenty-second until now.  That's 160 days so far.  That's $12,000 and rising daily. 

When we found this out, we started the adoption process.  And since I adopted her when I was single, Hubby is going to adopt her too, and legally become the Daddy he's been since he went with me to Guatemala to bring her home.  This is not a short process, and we are running against a ticking clock of limited appeals to Social Security for extended time.  We're on the final countdown, and less than thirty days to go to produce a US birth certificate (one that implies, I assume, that I gave birth to her HERE).  And we don't yet have a court date.  If we don't succeed in the allotted time, I have to re-apply and start a new clock running, and we will have to pay all bills due to that date, around $15,000.  If we DO succeed, Medicare will cover all dialysis-related bills going back to August twenty-second, and we will owe nothing.  Our anxiety has been steadily mounting.

So I am at a loss to explain why, when I opened the mail on Monday, it contained a brand new Medicare card for Babygirl.  I'm not calling anybody to find out why they sent it.  I'm just faxing a copy to everybody we owe medical bills to, and waiting to see what happens next, and proceeding with the adoption as if the urgency remains in case they really didn't mean it. 

I admit I cry easily these days.  But I was too stunned to cry over that card.  At least at first. 

DeeDee