Sad turn of events

I received a very sad phone call early this afternoon. Our agency called to inform us that our representative in Moscow had gone to see our referral at the orphanage. The way it was explained to us is that when she got there a doctor told her that the baby was seriously ill and that he has "severe neurological problems." The doctor said this child should not be placed with a family. It all ended, just like that. I just kept thinking "What? How can that be? What happened? Why? Why is this happening? This sounds like a really bad dream." Well, it was not a bad dream, it was as real as it gets. We have no idea what happened to this precious baby boy. Maybe he started having seizures. Maybe he got meningitis. Maybe he got hurt somehow. I could go on and on hypothesizing it all, the truth is we will never know exactly what happened to him. We were not legally tied to him in any way, so we have no rights to know any more about him. We are heartbroken. It is hard enough for adults to grasp this whole thing, imagine how it is explaining it all to a 5 year old. I told him that the baby was too sick for us to bring home so this wasn't going to be his little brother after all. Travis said, "Mommy, we can make him better, can't we?" No, I did not break into tears, but it did break my heart. I told him he was too sick for us to help him, that Russia would not let us have him anymore. Then he said, "So, no more Matthew Connor?" I told him no, no more Matthew Connor or Connor Matthew. He said, "So it might be a boy or a girl?" I told him yes, we are back to that again. He seemed to be OK with it, although I don't know if Daryle and I are. We know adoption is a roller coaster ride of emotions, but it is still hard to deal with when you are dealt a blow like this. After that news settled in she went on to discuss our options and where we can go from here. Basically we have two options. Option A- travel as planned but travel "blind". This means we would fly over there with no information. When we get there we would be taken to an orphanage and be shown a child. One good thing about this is that we can take a doctor with us to evaluate the child. There is a doctor we know of in Moscow who could come with us as we are looking at the child. If there are any red flags we would say no, and be shown another child. We could be matched with a child or we could come home still empty handed and no referral. It is a huge risk and a leap of faith. Option B- there is a baby boy who will be turning 1 in June. He is not "officially available" right now, but we could take a look at him and if we wanted to persue him we could travel to meet him in May. The problem with this is that we would then have to deal with all of the summer closures in Russia and some of our paperwork will begin to expire. This all leaves us with some very big decisions ahead of us. We are still going to Tuscon tomorrow to meet with our agency to go over travel information and we can discuss this more with her as well. We have to have our decision made by Sunday. If you could please keep us in your thoughts and prayers we would appreciate it. We are feeling emotional and vulnerable right now. We need to be in the right frame of mind to make a clear decision, one that is in the best interest of our family. I will write more when we make our decision. One thing I am VERY grateful for is that we did not already go over and see him and THEN have this happen to us. That would have been even more devastating for us to deal with. Or even worse, for us to bring him home and then find out he had severe neurological issues that weren't disclosed to us. I need to go to bed and sleep on this, I hope in the morning things seem more clear.