Thank you so much for taking the time to consider me and my husband Kaleb for this grant.To say our road to adoption has been rocky would be an understatement. Me and Kaleb got married in October 2014. We knew we wanted to start a family soon after we were married. In April of 2016 I woke up and my eyesight was blurry. I went to the eye doctor thinking it was a problem with my contacts. They looked at my optic nerves and immediately sent me to the ER to get a lumbar puncture. My intercranial pressure was very high which can cause you to lose your eyesight. I was then diagnosed with pseudo tumor cerebri, a disorder that causes you to have too much spinal fluid around your brain. I was sent immediately to a neurosurgeon who scheduled me to have a shunt placed to help drain the extra fluid around my brain. Within two weeks I completely lost my eyesight. The surgeon took me for emergency surgery for the shunt. I have had many complications including 22 revisions on the shunts, bowel obstructions for the shunt, and other problems. I finally found a neurosurgeon at Emory who was willing to do an experimental shunt on me. May of 2020, I had this shunt placed. This shunt has finally given me my life and eyesight back. I have been able to get back to work full time as a nurse, which has been such a blessing. After the long road to recovery for me, right when we thought that we were finally out of the woods, Kaleb was diagnosed with COVID April 2021. This was the beginning of the delta variant so we were not aware how deadly it could be for young people. Kaleb was admitted in the hospital and within 24 hours he was put on the ventilator. Doctors gave him a less than 5% chance of survival. God was so good and saved Kaleb's life. He was on the ventilator for 6 weeks then had to go to an LTAC to be weaned off the ventilator and have his tracheostomy removed. He then went to rehab for 6 weeks because he had to be paralyzed while on the ventilator, so he had to relearn how to use all muscles in his body again. He left rehab in a wheelchair, but he has worked so hard with outpatient physical therapy and now has totally regained all strength and doesn't have to use any medical equipment anymore. Since I have two shunts doctors do not recommend that I pursue pregnancy right now because pregnancy can increase your spinal fluid which could cause me to lose my eyesight again. God has always laid adoption on my heart so in 2023 we decided to start the adoption process. We were approved for home study in September 2023 and officially went active with our adoption consultants, mustard seed adoption consultants. In December 2023 we match with a birth mom that was due with a little girl March 2024. We were so excited we told all our family at Christmas time which was so special. We talked to the birth mom almost every day leading up to the birth. On March 4th we traveled down to Florida because the birth mom was set to have a scheduled C-section on March 5th which was such a special day for us because it was my mom's birthday. When we arrived at our Airbnb we received a text from our birth mother that she had decided not to pursue adoption and decided she wanted to parent. Driving home with an empty car seat was one of the hardest things that we have ever done. God’s strength is what has gotten us through this difficult time. We know his timing is perfect and we have faith that he will bless us with the perfect child when the time is right. We paid $56,000 toward our first adoption match and only get a small percentage back if we match again. We are currently on the stork drop list with our adoption agency that we matched with the first birth mom with, Love Adoption Law. With a stork drop we will still owe an additional $15,000 if we are chosen. We are praying that the Lord will help bless us with this money so that we can still pursue being parents. As tough as this road has been we know that the Lord called us to this mountain so that we could show others that it can be moved. We still believe that God is calling us to adoption, and we believe he will make a way for us to move forward. Again, thank you so much for taking the time to read our story.
