Volcano Complicates Adoption of Child With Down Syndrome
Volcano Complicates Adoption of Child With Down Syndrome
Monday April 19, 2010
There's been a lot in the news lately about ash from the volcano in Iceland wreaking havoc on European air travel, and a lot in the news lately about Eastern European adoption gone awry. Cross those two stories, and what do you get? Two women trapped in a Bulgarian hotel room with a just-adopted special-needs child and no way to get home.
Leah Spring, who writes about her daughter with Down syndrome and other family matters on the blog Garden of Eagan, went to Sofia, Bulgaria, in early April to assist in the adoption of a boy who has Down syndrome and a heart condition; check on other children in orphanages who need forever families; and talk with Bulgarian families who have chosen -- despite a lack of social support -- to raise their own children with DS. Plans were for Leah, adoptive mom Shelley Bedford, and newly adopted Kullen to return on April 18.
Then Eyjafjallajokull started filling European skies with sticky ash and European airports with grounded jets.
Leah's blog posts have been pretty good-spirited under the circumstances, but after days of mounting hotel bills, no help from the U.S. Embassy, and the difficulty of managing a child with special needs in such a stressful situation -- not to mention the chaos that ensues at home when Mom does not return as scheduled -- she's ready to call for reinforcements. In today's post, she writes:
"PLEASE someone call CNN or someone for us. ... Mayday Mayday! Tell news contacts we are staying at the Hotel Budapest in Sofia. ... We have a disabled child with a heart condition who is very ill. We need to get OUT of here!"
This is giving me flashbacks to our Russian adoption trip, which ran twice as long as expected, but did not involve natural disasters and medical conditions. If you can do anything to help these folks, even it's just to write about it on your blog and help get the word out, please do.
You can learn more about Leah and Shelley's efforts to help kids with Down syndrome in Eastern Europe on their Connecting the Rainbow site, and follow their never-ending journey on the blog there on and on Garden of Eagen. It should be easier to get a family home than to put a kid on a plane and send him back, shouldn't it?
If you know of other special-needs families in volcano-related distress, share the details in the comments.
Photo by MODIS Rapid Response Team/NASA via Getty Images
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