familiesOur Adoption Story: Shannon and Dennis
Shannon and I met in high School. We dated for over 4 years before we decided to get married. We have been married for 13 years in August. We wanted to have a child right away, but it did not happen. We tried for a few years, then decided to check with our doctor. When I was 19, I was found to be diabetic. I was such a bad diabetic that on a good day my blood sugar levels were over 300. The numbers for a normal reading should be between 60 and 120. I was put on medication, but I was never told this could make me not able to have children. I was a large man weighing in at over 400 pounds. I was very active, like scuba diving, hiking, and many other things, I just was never able to get the weight off. With being over weight, and diabetic adoption was out of the question.
In October of 2002 I had the gastric bypass. I have lost over 200 pounds in 7 months. Along with losing the weight I lost being diabetic. Now the test show I never was a diabetic. I am now very healthy and I exercise every day. I thought that losing the weight would help with my infertility. The doctor said there is little to no chance of me ever having a child naturally. So we started to look at adoption.
We thought of domestic adoption, but the wait could be forever, and we wanted a child for almost 12 years at the time. We looked at the internet (such an amazing tool) for about a month. We ran across EAC and saw they were having a seminar in our area. We went and were looking through the story books. My wife was at one end of the room, and I was at the other. On the way home, she asked me, if we were going to do this where would I like to adopt from. I said I think China, she started laughing. She said I thought the same thing. That is when we knew we were going to adopt from China. We started the paper chase and here we are waiting to pick up our daughter Megan.
