What if...

What if.... the Paropakar Hospital is open to our help and I travel to Kathmandu to get Ghane examined and diagnosed?

What if.... she can actually be treated with the surgical insertion of a shunt system or similar?

Statistics show that 40% of shunt patients experience infections or other shunt malfuntions, and almost all patients will have to have their shunt sytem replaced one or more times during their life. Moreover, patients should be monitored every 1-2 years.

If Ghane is successfully treated, but sent back to the hospital where she came from, there's still no hope - she could get an infection, the shunt could fail, and there would be no help or treatment to get, noone to take responsibility, noone to pay the costs.......

As for Endoscopic Third Ventriculostomy, I have been told by Dr. Basant Pant, Neuro Foundation Nepal (http://www.neurosurgery.org.np)/  that this procedure is not viable when hydrocephalus has developed below the age of 1 year.

The good news is that Dr. Pant is connected to the Annapurna Neurological Institute & Allied Sciences, which has the facilities for both CT and MRI scans, shunt- and ETV-operations. Moreover, he knows the Chief Gynaecologist at Paropakar whom we're writing the letter to, and he has promised to contact her for revisions of the case and what can be done.

What if...we already now have to address the really difficult questions behind taking the responsibility of this little girl that we are about to take?

I began a last week to look into the possibilities of Christian and me adopting Ghane. Outlooks are NOT good: adoptions from Nepal to Denmark have formally stopped since July 2010, due to legal and ethical verification problems.

However, there are dispensation options in the Danish law, and this case is just so not-applicable in every way: Ghane is not put up for adoption anywhere, she's not in the orphanages that collaborate with foreign adoption organisations, so it's not like we would be snatching a child from someone else on the waiting list. Furthermore, we would most likely be doing Nepal a "favour," since the Paropakar Hospital which is governmental, has no means of keeping her under their wings, particularly with her special needs.

As for Christian's and my ability to take care of a potentially - most likely! - handicapped girl?

We have spend the entire weekend talking it through, and there is no question that this will change our lives and this little family forever, and Sebastian will have a completely different childhood than we imagined for him just one year ago, but at the end of the day, we both agree that we can do this.

We are a resource-strong family, not just in the obvious ways of material goods, our house, income, education and health - but Christian and I have a surplus as parents, as a couple, despite our busy every-day lives. Sebastian is living proof of that.

It will be tough, we will need help and knowledge and strength and energy to train, stimulate, love, and then love some more, and never forget attention to the wonderful child that we already have. But the reward is the family this will make us, and just thinking of what a tolerant and open-minded little boy Sebastian would be from having a sister like Ghane, makes it so meaningful!

Must find out more about how to engage with the Nepalese authorities once I get out there - but Madan is positive that adopting from the Nepalese side is doable.

Then there's the Danish side - so many rules and procedures, but the headline of all the documents we have perused so far state one and the same: adoption should be approved if it is for the benefit of the child.

It is pretty obvious right now that Ghane has no future currently - and if succesfully treated by means of what we can do for her, she will still have no future, unless with us.

What if...