Two agencies are confirming that the CCAA has mailed referrals, and that they should arrive Monday. I’ll give that rumor an R5.

I’m still seeing a lot of reports of either the 11th or the 12 being the cut off. I will give it an R3 that the cut off is either the 11th or the 12th.

I’m seeing rumors of the 11th and 12 floating around now.

Someone told me privately that the agency saying the 9th has backed away from that statement.

I’m still not seeing anything that would put either of these rumors above an R1 or R2. I’ll put them both at an R2 for now.

If you aren’t familiar with the way I rate rumors, check out the Rumor Ratings link in the top right section of links. If you aren’t familiar with how the matching room works, check out the How the Matching Room Works link in the Important Posts section of links in the right hand column.

I have not seen anyone from the most recent group of NSN referrals reporting a TA yet. TA’s and the next referrals are not linked together in any way, but there were some questions about whether TA’s were arriving, and the answer is that I haven’t seen anyone reporting a TA yet.

Rumors involving the 9th and the 12th are floating around out there. However, I’m not giving any Rumor at this point anything over an R1.

My most recent projections can be found here. Poll results are on this page.

There is a rumor floating around that the CCAA has matched (or is matching – depending on who is retelling the rumor) through the 9th.

I do not know which agency is saying it, but there appears to only be one saying it at the moment. That puts this rumor down in the R1 range.

We talked about this yesterday, we’re trying to put together a list of special needs that is all encompassing, and we want to combine the various disorders and issues together that often aren’t differentiated between on referral medical information. Also, for some issues, like heart defects or limb differences, it may make more sense to combine the dozen or so specific descriptions into one larger category.

Here is where we are with things now:

• Albinism
• Age
• Ambiguous Genitalia
• Amblyopia
• Amniotic Banding/ Missing Limb
• Anal Atresia, Imperforate Anus
• Anorectal malformations
• Apraxia/ Mute
• Arachnoid Cyst
• Arthrogryposis
• Atresia
• Autism
• Blindness
• Brachial Plexus Injury
• Burns
• Cafe au lait spot, Nevus, and/or Mongolian spot that makes the CCAA declare the child to have special needs
• Cataracts
• Cerebral Palsy, hemiplegia, hemiparesis
• Cleft Lip/ Palate
• Club Feet
• Concealed or Inconspicuous Penis
• Congenital Syphilis
• Congenital Torticollis (Twisted Neck)
• Deafness/ Hearing Loss
• Developmental Delay
• Diabetes
• DiGeorge syndrome, 22q11 deletion syndrome
• Down Syndrome
• Dwarfism
• Ectodermal Dysplasia
• Ezcema
• Failure to Thrive
• Feeding/ Swallowing Issues
• Fibular/ Tibular Hemimelia
• Food Allergies
• Funnel Chest/ Pigeon Breast
• G6PD deficiency
• Gastroschisis
• Glaucoma
• Heart Defects to include Hypoplastic left heart syndrome, Atrial septal defect, Ventricular septal defect, Tetroloy of fallot, Patent ductus arteriosus
• Hemangiomas
• Hemifacial Microsomia
• Hemihyperplasia
• Hemihypertrophy
• Hemolytic anemia
• Hemophilia
• Hep A
• Hep B
• Hep C
• Hernia
• Hip Dysplasia
• HIV
• Hydrocephalus
• Hypospadias
• Ichthyosis
• Joint issues
• Lead Poisoning
• Limb Differences (except club feet)
• Low Birth Weight
• Lymphedema
• Megacolon
• Meningitis
• Microtia and Atresia
• Missing Eye(s)
• Neurofibromatosis, NF1, NF2
• Nystagmus
• Osteogenesis Imperfecta (Brittle Bone Disease)
• Polands syndrome
• Polio
• Ptosis
• Pyloric Stenosis
• Rickets
• Sacrococcygeal teratoma
• Scabies
• Scoliosis
• Seizure Disorders
• Spina Bifida, Tethered cord, Meningocele, Myelomeningocele
• Strabismus
• Syndactyly
• Teratoma
• Thalassemia
• Transposition of the great arteries
• Tuberculosis
• Tumor
• Turner’s Syndrome
• Undescended Testes
• Velocardiofacial syndrome

Honestly, I was hoping to get more input. I didn’t want to have to look each of these up in Wikipedia and figure out what they are, and remember that something I looked up 20 minutes ago seemed to say pretty much the same thing. I’m not an expert in this, and even looking each thing up isn’t likely to do what I’d like to be able to do. Some of you out there have made yourselves experts in this – helping me to get this part right is going to give us more information in the long run.

Again, this survey will be an ongoing survey, and will hopefully gather a lot of information about the children being referred, matched, and identified. It will be for parents to fill out before they travel, so the information will not be about actual special needs, but about what the child’s paperwork says their special needs are.

To get actual special needs we’d need to do another survey that compares what the paperwork says to reality. But we’ll talk about that one another time, right now I’m trying to put together the ongoing survey.

As I’m working on the Post Referral/Post TA survey, I need a few more pieces of information.

1. What countries are currently adopting from China? Here is the list from the CCAA site, but it’s a few years old and I want to make sure we don’t miss anyone:

2. A list of Special Needs, here is what I have so far, from combining a few lists:

Some of these seem to be saying the same thing, or something close enough that a family may not know for sure which box to check if they have sketchy medical information. If there are items that should be combined, I’d like to do that. I don’t want families having to make the choice between two items and just having to do eenie meenie miney moe to decide which one (or both) to check.