The Story of My Life: The First Clue (Part One)

As the children grew, it was so fun to watch their physical features and personalities develop and to see what all they had inherited from both Steve and me.  Josiah shared not just my brown eyes and facial features, but some of my personality traits as well. Zoe had her daddy's beautiful blue eyes and outgoing personality.  They both were quick learners and had a love for music.

The early days of life for little ones are filled with many doctors visits.  As we went for this or for that, for the first time in my life I began to think about how not cool it was that I didn't have to answer all of the questions on the sheet. You know, the ones about your family history and all the diseases and conditions you could possibly have inherited. I used to think it was great that I could just put "Don't know - adopted" and be done with it. But now with the best interest of my kids at heart, I began to wonder if there were conditions that I needed to be aware of,  things that I could have possibly passed on to them without knowing.

This concern grew as a couple of years after Zoe was born, I began experiencing digestive issues. As the doctors did multiple tests on me to try to figure out what was wrong (MRI, endoscopy, etc) and coming up with no answers, the thought that I may have some kind of inherited condition grew. Before you get overly concerned about what might possibly be wrong with me, the final conclusion after many months of tests was that I had a yeast overgrowth. I did a cleanse and took some anti-fungals and it pretty much went away.  But during the months that all of this uncertainty was going on, when Steve asked if we should contact the adoption agency to see if they had or could get any health information for me, I said yes.

He called and talked to them and they said they did not have any health information on file but would try to track down my birth mother to see if they could get any information from her.  I was at home the day they called back.  I answered the phone and when they told me it was the adoption agency, I was  hopeful that maybe they had some information for me. Instead, they informed me that they had searched for my birth mom but could not find any trace of her. It was almost as though she had fallen off the earth.  Their suggestion was that I register with the State of Indiana Vital Records in hopes that I might be able to obtain some health information that way. You see, up until January 1, 1986, the State of Indiana did not require that a comprehensive medical report be included in the file of an adoptee.  In an effort to try to help adoptees gather this information, they started a medical history registry.  But the registry is voluntary.  On top of that, I learned at this same time, that if you were adopted in the state of Indiana after January 1, 1994, when you turned 21 you were able to write in and request identifying information from the state unless your birth parent had written in and specifically requested that it not be released.  But for people adopted prior to that, which I was, the only way to get identifying information from my file was if both of my birth parent AND I sent in a release form to the state.  Frustrated and pretty certain that it wouldn't produce any results, I filled out the forms anyway and sent them in.  Sure enough - nothing.

It wasn't too long after that and Steve and I were over at my parent's house.  I don't remember what we had been doing over there, but what I do remember very distinctly is my dad asking me just before we left how I was feeling.  I told him about the same. At that point in time, he asks me if I had ever thought about looking for my birth mother to see if I could get medical information from her.   I told him then how we had already contacted the adoption agency to see if they could get information for me and how they were unable to find her.  It was at this point he said something that totally blew me away.....He told me that when I was adopted, that the courts accidentally sent them the wrong papers.  He had begun reading them all those years ago and once he got to my birth mother's name, he realized he wasn't supposed to be seeing that information, so he folded the letter up and mailed it back to them.  But even after all those years he couldn't forget and if I wanted to know what her name was, HE WOULD TELL ME........  (to be continued.)