Psychiatrist Woes

Well, my day can pretty much be summed up by this post that I posted on the Haitian Angels board:

So, I know many of you have had "issues" with finding a psychiatrist,etc. I just thought that I would vent about the problems that I've been having with this.

First of all, my home study social worker recommended that we get an appointment with a psychiatrist rather than a psychologist. She said that she had some people who were adopting from Russia and they decided to change the rule to only accept a psychiatrist - those people had to get their psych letter re-done when they were already halfway through the process and it held them up. This sounded like good advice considering the fact that Haiti's elections are coming up and who knows if the new people in charge might decide a psychiatrist letter is needed.

Little did I know how hard it would be to get an appointment. Most offices told me that it would be a month or two before I could get in. I found one psychologist who (after not calling me back for a week and then playing phone tag for a week) said that he could have a colleague do this for me very soon. He said in one week, or at the most, two. We got the appointment for two weeks later, but the doctor ended up being sick that day. We rescheduled for tonight (one more week later).

Well, the appointment was a disaster. Basically, the guy that I talked to hadn't told the psychiatrist anything about why we were coming. When we showed up, the doctor was downright hostile toward us - he said that he didn't understand why the Haitian government would want this and that it was ridiculous for us to want him to give us a "stamp of approval" to adopt a child. While we were sitting there, dumbstruck, he called the psychologist who had set this all up and apparently he told him that we would need to have a bunch of psychological tests done (which I know we don't need - other places had told me we could do this in one meeting). By the time we left, I was about ready to cry - the whole thing was a huge waste of the six weeks that it took me to get the appointment! I felt so stupid because I KNEW that I should have triple-checked ahead of time that they were NOT going to force us to have a bunch of tests done. The doctor said (with real attitude), "Well, you'll have to get all of these tests done and by the way, they're very expensive, but nobody ever said that adopting a child was cheap." As if we don't know that! Obviously, we'll pay what we have to pay to get our son home, but now we'll probably have to pay for this ridiculous non-appointment AND pay for another doctor (who knows if insurance will cover any of it - especially if they get a claim from two doctors).

I'm just SO frustrated because this is the last piece of paper that I need to complete my dossier (well, I'm still working on the NOTARIZED bank letter that BOTH of my banks are refusing to give me) and now it's looking like it's going to be over a month before I can get it. I don't know how you guys who have been waiting for so long can stand it. I just want to get my little boy home and start teaching him sign language. I know that every month that I am delayed in getting his dossier to Haiti is another month that he has no language to speak of. Sorry for my very long rant. Just a bad day - I know you all understand. On the plus side, I'm going to be visiting my little sweet boy in just four days, so I really should count myself lucky.Nicole H.