Neela's past

We went to visit the orphanage this morning. I just can't say how great it was to be able to do this! We had her along with us, of course, and she did really well. She was teary at times and reached for several people, but overall, she still clung to us and it seemed like maybe it was good for her to go there with us - a sort of closure if that is possible for an 18 month old.

The orphanage is set back from the street. Once you enter through the gate, there is a large courtyard with a small park and then a high rise building for the elderly to live in. Behind that is the orphanage. Included within the building is an elementary school for children living there as well as for some children of workers from rural areas as it is cheaper than other schools. Monica took us in and as soon as we got into the outdoor play courtyard, several people came toward us smiling and saying "Jing Jing"! They knew her and they were all excited to see her! She seemed to be fond of one man who was holding a child and talking with her. She reached out and tried to go to him. As we looked in on a class (music perhaps as they had a piano in the room?) for children with special needs, many women started coming out and there were calls of "Jing Jing" coming from so many people. It is obvious that she was well loved in her former home. We had started calling her Neela yesterday, but have been using Jing Jing as a nickname today as it sounded so sweet coming from all of her nannies - sort of a singing quality to the way they said it.

We then went on to the baby nursery. This is where she probably spent her first 2 or 3 months while they helped her recover from her illness and then decided where she would move to next. There were probably about a dozen very tiny babies lying in small cribs. They looked SO tiny. It wasn't until later that I tried to imagine Jing Jing lying there looking so small, being cared for by all of these wonderful women. She is so round and strong right now, it is hard to imagine her small and vulnerable.

We then walked back through the play yard and further out through the garden to a small apartment building. This is where Neela lived after her first few months. She lived with two foster parents and 5 other children. Most of the children were quite a bit older and in school for the day. Another young boy had been recently adopted by a Chinese family. We were able to take a picture of a photograph of her foster family.

Her "Sunday mama" was there. She is the woman that takes over when the foster parents can go home to their own families or out to do something else. The foster father also goes out to work at a job during the week. I looked around a bit. The apartment was pretty spare, but overall fairly clean. She slept in the big bed with her foster parents. Another little girl slept in a small bed next to them. There was an aquarium filled with stuffed animals. But really, I did not absorb as many details as I wanted to. I was in a sort of amazement that we had been granted a rare opportunity to see into her past a bit. We are so grateful to know that she had people to care for her who loved her. Her Sunday mama held her and she was a little unsure. She looked back at us, she looked at her, she looked around, but she did not cry. After a bit, I took her back and she left with a little toy kitty from her old home.

The next stop was the health clinic. Yesterday, Dave and I talked about whether or not we should be including the following as we did not want to worry people, but after our continuing experience with the medical world in China today, we thought is was just an experience that really should be documented as it has become a significant part of our trip.

For some background history, when Neela arrived, she had a gauze bandage on her belly that they said was covering a heat rash that they had treated with some medicine, though it was getting better. After inspecting it after everyone left, we immediately knew that this was most certainly not a heat rash. She had a huge knob sticking out of her stomach and I had no idea what it was, though it looked quite ugly and scary. We immediately called Monica, who came back to our room and consulted with the orphanage director by phone. They told us it was a boil so we went online to Mayo.org and researched it. The doctor says that boils are quite common in the children because the weather is so hot and humid and they bundle the children up so much. Why they don't then bundle them less is beyond me. (On a similar vein of thought, I can't pair up the intense bundling with the wearing of split pants. Why is it ok for their bare butts to be hanging out in the cold but they have to wear three layers on a 70 degree day???) Anyway, with further research, it seemed to be not too serious and would need to drain before it could heal. We attempted to apply warm compresses to this little person who was still not really trusting us.

Monday, the director looked at it again and said they would send a doctor to our hotel room as she thought it needed more medicine. The doctors showed up wearing jeans and t-shirts and poked around at her belly and put some more brown goo on it and bandaged it up. I have never felt so out of control of a situation as having to sit there with 5 Chinese women (Monica, 2 doctors, a nurse and the director) standing there talking a mile a minute, not a word of it that I can understand, all about the health of our child. They told us to put this goo on once a day and keep it totally dry and that the boil would go back down. All of this was counter to our research of the Western approach to treatment. We have been consulting with nurse Grammy who, in turns, has been consulting with our pediatrician back home. We decided to follow her advice and went back to compressing.

Now today, they wanted to check her out again at the orphanage clinic. We sat down in what appeared to be a staff break room to wait. The doctors came in, now wearing blue lab coats at least, and began prodding around on her belly again as I held her squirming body while sitting on a break room chair. Again, we sat at their mercy as words flew back and forth and my eyes followed from speaker to speaker as if by some chance I might figure out what was going on. They left and came back and put some darker brown goo (which is supposed to make it softer??? what???) on it and then bandaged it again. This did not instill confidence in Dave as he thought they could hardly put the tape on, how could they possibly know what treatment to do. They did say that we should come back on Friday and they would drain the abscess. This is the only thing so far that seems to make sense as the correct course of treatment, though I must admit, I am nervous about them being the ones to do it. We will say a little prayer that they know what they are doing and I can't wait to rush her in to Dr. Gold when we get back to Minneapolis. For this reason alone, I wish our trip were much shorter.

Our last stop this morning was off to the hospital in front of which she was found in late April of 2006. It is a special hospital for women and their babies. We can only guess that maybe she was brought here to be found and cared for as she was very sick and her parents could not afford to get medical treatment for her. And perhaps being born a girl did not further her chances... The hospital gate is wedged in between a couple of shops on a very busy commercial street. It is incredible to imagine that a little baby could be laid down amidst all the chaos and not a person to see it happen. In any case, we are glad that she was quickly found and got the medical care she needed.