First glimpse of our daughter Naomi

We saw Naomi's first referral photo 7 years ago today. In the midst of a suspension of adoptions in Cambodia, where we'd thought that both of the children we'd prayed about and planned to adopt would come from, our referral for our 4ish year old boy was made ,but not for the baby girl we had also prayed for. Over a year ago being matched with Noah, and still waiting for him, God brought us to our daughter, in Vietnam.the other country we'd felt most drawn to at that time. We had said we were open to some medical special needs and Naomi was diagnosed with Hep B. NO QUESTION in our minds but that this sweet baby in the photo, this Thoa, was OUR DAUGHTER: Hep B and all.........
Fast forward to today, one more of many visits to Naomi's Pediatric gastro-enterologist for a check up, assessment and lab work , all to determine how high her viral DNS counts were and what if any damage were the high numbers of virus running around in her 41 pound body doing to her young liver. Naomi has been on a medication for several years, a chemotherapy in the true sense, and fro a time it was causing a decrease in the number of virus were alive and kicking im her body. The thing with children and Hep B is that they tend to grow and develop more quickly than a med can do its complete virus killing job, and the child develops an immunity to the med, or the virus mutates and stops responding to the meds. Apparently Naomi's virus is one of those which has mutated and is no longer responding to the treatment. The second consideration for Naomi is that for some reason , Asian people are more resistant to the Hep B chem drugs than are white or black people. In November Naomi's counts shot back up almost higher than they were when we began treatment 6 23/4 years ago. The lab values from today's blood draw will tell us the next part of the story : will we be rejoicing that her the virus is responding to the increased dosage of med for the last three months OR will we schedule a liver biopsy, assess liver damage, and start a second drug to go along with the one Naomi takes daily now? I will know more mid week next week, but we have been praying for a healing since we first saw the beautiful face in the tiny photo, believing God to keep Naomi healthy in spite of the incredibly high numbers of liver damaging virus are rampant in her body. She is not sick, at this point, that we can see. She is an active fun loving terrific equestrian and future rodeo cowgirl who loves everything in life except her visits to the pedi-gastro doc. (Naomi hates talking about the sickness and hates being talked about in a visit)
My sweet precious baby girl, growing up into a petite but spunky young lady, You have given your heart to Jesus, you are His and He is yours and that is the only thing I can be certain about in your life. Some of the details of Hep B are pretty grim, yet some are amazing and we will pray for a healing of your disease for as long as God directs us to pray that way. WE BELIEVE!