Ready to Pull My Hair Out!!!

OH MY WORD!  I have never been so frustrated in my life.  This whole thing has turned into nothing but a bunch of ridiculousness and bureaucracy.  I had really wanted to wait to make another post until we had news that we had gotten our consulate appt and were about to travel.  Alas this is not the case.  It is more hurry-up-and-wait kind of stuff.

Ok, so here's the deal.  Last I posted we were in the process of obtaining our waiver.  Well my oh my, that only took WEEKS to do!  First the health dept wasn't sure they were going to sign it because they didn't feel they had enough information. Ok, fair enough.  So I got them more information.  Well then, their doctor was out on vacation.  The other person who was there didn't want to sign it without an MD's approval.  The TB doctor at the hospital was on rounds that day and not in the office, he was too busy the next day and was conducting some sort of interviews the following day (which would be Friday) according to his nurse, so good luck with getting anything from him.  We really needed to get it signed by someone by the end of the week because the CDC was going to be out for a conference the whole next week, and there would be no one there to review our waiver if we got it there past Friday.

So I ended up getting in touch with a pediatric specialist who had been helping us in the case anyway and asked her if she could sign it on the physician side, and speak to the gentleman at the health dept giving him the ok to sign the other portion.  No problem, but of course with doctors being busy as they are, this was all going to take awhile.

Well praise God, it FINALLY got signed by all parties and got into the CDC by Friday afternoon after MANY phone calls, faxes, etc.  Then-- of course-- another problem.  The doctor had not sent a signed letter on official letterhead to send along with the waiver stating that she was going to be responsible for the TB treatment of our son.  That took another week to get that sent in, got it in by Fri at 5:30 but guess what, the woman who would need to review all the waiver stuff and put it together to send to the consulate was going on vacation the following Monday!  So, 5:30 Fri was too late of course, and our agency told us they would have to see if there would be anyone there that week to review it in her absence.  Seriously??!!  There is only ONE person in that whole place who could be responsible to put the info together and send it to the consulate?

Fast forward to today, Thursday, and I get a call from our agency.  Apparently it got to someone in the CDC for review before going off to the consulate, but now the letter the doctor wrote out, like asked, has been rejected by the CDC because it is not from the health dept!  She isn't WITH the health dept!!  No one ever said she had to be.  She is just the one who will be responsible for keeping up with his reviews and treatment, and it said ANY physician could sign that portion of the waiver and make that statement.  This doctor is the HEAD of pediatric infectious diseases in NC and has jurisdiction everywhere in our state for this type of thing.  She even has contacts at the CDC whom she spoke with about this case and reviewed info with.  Surely they probably assumed she was going to be signing this paper and giving the letter, so what is the hold up??

Just a very frustrated Momma and Daddy on this end trying, TRYING to be patient.  But all this craziness and paper chasing has me exhausted.  And it seems ridiculous because the CDC has already stated that our son is approved to come over here, this paper is just a formality.  I really don't understand the difficulty.  It just stresses me out to know that our son is waiting over there, hoping that we are still coming to get him, and that he was told the wait time would be about 6 weeks and it has now been almost 3 mos!  It will probably be more that that by the time I get over there to get him.  Like Tim says, well maybe he'll be home by Fourth of July!

Seriously though, he is our son, and we want him home.  Like, yesterday!  Please pray that all this waiting and paper chasing and nonsense can come to an end quickly and we can travel SOON to bring Gideon home.  Thank you.