A little over a month ago I’d had it with our boys and their feet. Ruslan had once again walked a hole through the bottom of his shoes and another PT had told us that he couldn’t help, and said, “In fact, no one in Ukraine can help you.” In the throes of frustration, I decided to put it out to the wonderful Wide Awake community to see if any of you knew someone who could help our Ruslan. We had exhausted our resources here in Ukraine and, at last, decided it was time to look outside our borders for help. I wrote a blog post asking for help or recommendations for Ruslan and was blown away by all of you! You all came out of the woodwork with ideas and offers to reach out to doctors on Ruslan’s behalf. Many of you even told me that you had been following us for a long time, but this was your first time reaching out—and I was so, so glad to hear from you! It was really encouraging to see how many of you deeply care for our boys. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
I am so pleased and thankful and EXCITED to share with you that a medical team and hospital in California have agreed to treat Ruslan’s foot for free! It’s really going to happen! I’m still a bit in shock, and I’m not sure I’ll believe it’s real until Jed and Ruslan land there in California. But, believe it or not, we are moving forward in faith and doing the work on our end to make it happen. It’s so exciting, right? Currently, during wartime, the US embassy in Kyiv is not issuing any visas. That means that we had to find an embassy in another country at which to schedule a visa interview. Embassies always prioritize the residents of the country where the embassy is located, and on most of the websites, it said that nonresidents would need to wait until 2024 for a visa interview. We really, really didn’t want to wait a year for this surgery when we have doctors
and a hospital willing and able to do it whenever we’re ready! But, we worked it out, and Ruslan has a visa appointment in July in Bucharest, Romania. The tentative plan is for Ruslan and Jed to travel to Romania for the visa in late July or early August and then fly straight from Bucharest to California for the surgery. Once the surgery is done, Ruslan will be non-weight bearing for six weeks. So, altogether, Jed and Rus will likely be gone for about two months.
— Kim Johnson
If you’d like to help Jed and Ruslan with the expenses involved in traveling and staying in California, please send a donation to Room to Bloom with “Ruslan” in the memo.
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Room to Bloom’s mission is to promote the beauty of adoption and to ascribe dignity to people with Down syndrome and other special needs. We do this by partnering with organizations that are dedicated to orphan care and adoption advocacy, strengthening families who have children with special needs, and giving a voice to the vulnerable.
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Interested in Adoption?
The process of adoption can be quite complex and confusing. If you have any questions about adoption, please contact:
Judy Williams | Adopt Global Services | 800-957-9384 | 2046 Rushmore Ct., Bel Air, MD 21015
Caring for Kids, Inc. | 800-254-1725 | [email protected]
