Dan has barely told anyone the his whole story until this episode. He shared that he was in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) as an infant. Then his son's rare medical condition and his wife’s ability to share her heredity while he could not was a catalyst for his search. Dan is thankful for the warm welcome he’s received in his paternal family, and is still hoping that his birthmother will come around to wanting to know him. This is Dan's Journey.

Dan (00:04):

I kind of find it ironic that now that I found my birth father, that my birth parents had passed away. So it's like, I hear a lot of people when you try to read to your birth parents, it's like your chapter one in the beginning. You don't know that. But now that I met them, I'm getting more about my beginning, but I don't have my parents to give me chapters one and two, you know, when you're real young and you don't remember everything,

Damon (00:30):

Who am I? Who am I?

Damon (00:35):

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I'm Damon Davis and on today's show is Daniel. He called me from Nicholasville, Kentucky. Dan has barely told anyone his whole story until this episode, he shared that his son's rare medical condition and his wife's ability to share her heredity while he could not was a catalyst for his search. Dan is thankful for the warm welcome he's received in his paternal family and is still hoping that his birth mother will come around to wanting to know him. This is Dan's journey. Daniel was born in January of 1980, adopted four months later after he spent that period of time in the neonatal intensive care unit, the NICU.

Dan (01:34):

So I was born six weeks premature, and I had some brain and lung issues. So I was in the NICU for the first four months of life. The doctor didn't think I would live to two may never walk and could be blind.

Damon (01:48):

Dan's adoptive parents had a variety of personal setbacks that prevented them from getting pregnant. But four years after Dan was born, his little brother who is biological to their parents was conceived. They grew up out in the country, outside of Morgantown, West Virginia, and the brothers got along just fine. Their father's side of the family lived nearby. So all of the kids just ran up and down from house to house, taking advantage of being outdoors.

Dan (02:15):

Two of my uncles live within a mile of me, so we could walk. I could walk house to house and run around and displaying the neighborhood.

Damon (02:22):

That's incredible. That's some of the best growing up, man, when you can just go between house to house, safe and sound. No worries.

Dan (02:31):

Go run around to the woods in the neighborhood and play, stick guns and just run around. And so, yeah,

Damon (02:37):

I love that. That's really amazing. Yeah. Dan said he never felt out of place in his family. He said he always knew he was adopted. And his adopted mother used to talk about his birth mother calling her by name. Dan said, he'd share more about that later. In his fourth grade health class, Dan learned what adoption truly meant. I asked him how felt when he learned the meaning of adoption at that age,

Dan (03:03):

I kind of cut kind of quiet about it. And what was interesting in my house, my mother was adopted around the age of eight. She was adopted, but learning later on when I became in my twenties and thirties, learning about her adoption, it's much different and darker in contrast to my own story. So I never really talked to her about it at all. Despite the commonality that we have. So, um, once I found out, I remember feeling kind of confused about why I was adopted and even though you're adopted and my family was great. It's still kind of like you fit in. You know, even though you fit in with your family, you still know there's something else. It's kind of different. If that makes sense.

Damon (03:41):

Dan kept quiet about adoption growing up, going on to graduate high school, attend the university of Kentucky for college, then earned his PhD in biomedical engineering. It was in grad school where he met his wife and they eventually had a son together the whole time Dan's own adoption. Never really came up as a topic of discussion.

Dan (04:02):

All honesty. No, I kept it to myself. I think I told my wife while we were dating. And then I really didn't bring it up hardly at all with anybody, I guess I didn't know how to talk about, so I wasn't sure how to process it. So I just never talked about it. So for me to come on this podcast to talk to you is kind of a big step.

Damon (04:22):

Wow. Well, thanks for doing it, man. You're going to, yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how you feel at the other end, after having delved into everything. And then I'm sure you're going to help somebody else by sharing your own story too.

Dan (04:34):

That's a part of the reason I agreed to do it. Cause I contact you and I'll talk about it here a little bit later when we get into the search of how I found the podcast while I was searching.

Damon (04:43):

Interesting. Well, that's exactly what I was going to getting ready to turn to then is you sound like you found out what adoption truly meant when you were maybe eight years old. Fourth grade? Yeah. About eight or nine. Yeah. You kept it in the back of your mind. Never really talked about it at all. You revealed it to your wife when you, before you got married when you started dating, but that was it. So what was the catalyst for you to even begin a search? Because it sounds like you pushed it down and didn't really have any interest in, in looking. What was, what, what sparked your interest? All of a sudden

Dan (05:17):

The first one started in 2010 when my father passed away. So I started thinking, what if it's too late? I don't want to hear a second hand about my biological parents. I'd like to be able to at least meet them or talk to them hopefully and see if the name that I had initially for my birth mother was correct.

Damon (05:35):

Dan started searching in 2010 using the name his adoptive mother had for his birth mother. He said that at the time he was adopted, one of the wristbands on his tiny arm had the woman's name on it, identifying them as mother and son. So his mom secretly jotted the name down, then wrote it in Danny's baby book. For later, she also scribbled the non identifying information. She knew in the book. In 2011, he applied for his non-identifying information, receiving a huge packet in the mail from the state of West Virginia.

Dan (06:08):

So at basically gave me some information about my medical history and said I was born early and that my birth mother intended to use a private agency to facilitate the adoption. But the agency said I was too sick and that no one would probably want me. So that's why she went to the state to facilitate the adoption. You said I had some issues with my lung, an affection and a brain bleed. And again, they said they probably probably wouldn't survive. So I was born about eight weeks early.

Damon (06:38):

Let me ask you this, just on that, because you've raised your, your challenges at birth more than once. And how was it for you to read those details about yourself? I guess there's two pieces to that. One if they have manifested themselves in you throughout your life, as an adult, then you would have lived with it and it probably didn't strike you, but like just tell me, what did it feel like to learn those details about yourself as an infant?

Dan (07:07):

Well, I, oddly enough knew pretty much about them growing up. And in fact, I remember in high school having to write like a book about myself from, you know, age zero to 18 and you know, my mom helped write my first chapters in my life and telling how I was in the hospital then. So when I learned about it, when I got my down in identifying information, it just really kind of confirmed what I already knew. So it wasn't anything really shocking, I guess the most shocking part would be that she attempted to use an agency and that she's like, no, you're, he's too sick. And then she had to go to the state. So I guess that if anything would be the most shocking or eye opening part where it's like they can pick and choose the agencies kind of. So that was probably the most opening part. And from listening to your podcast and the other ones and joining some Facebook group, that's probably the most eyeopening part. It's like, no, we're going to pass you off to the state.

Damon (08:03):

Yeah, I can't help. But think of that situation almost like product quality control.

Dan (08:13):

Yes. That's, that's probably what I kind of the biggest opening eyes about adoption in a whole that I kind of, you know, after here, again, hearing your podcast and looking on the internet, just kind of realizing that the most eyeopening part. Yeah,

Damon (08:27):

No, you you're teaching me something here because I can't say that I really had ever focused in on this piece. I've, you know, I've often heard adoption referred to as, you know, a moneymaker and you know, some of the, in a, in a commercialized entity and things like that. And, and I understand it in theory, but I've never really thought truly about what you just said, that as, you know, you envision a product coming down the assembly line and you know, the mechanical arm sweeps the bad ones away. That's really, that's really fascinating. I just never really thought that that was a piece of it. Thank you for that. The non identifying information stated that his birth mother was home for Christmas. Then Dan was born. It described the relationship in which he was conceived as a summer fling.

Dan (09:24):

It did note that my birth mother contacted my birth father shortly after the birth and that a social worker also talked about him or talked about me. So it did indicate that my birth father knew I was born. So anyway, so when I get the letter, initially, it says we've deleted all names, deleted all non-identifying information. So I looked through my 30 pages information and from that information, I could find my full birth father's name in the file. So

Damon (09:53):

Somehow the man's name had been left in the case notes. He was even able to piece together his birth mother's name, even though he already had that information. Dan figured out what state his biological parents were from. And he learned his birth mother's career goals. With those clues. Dan went online.

Dan (10:11):

I took that information in 2011 and was able to find my birth mother on Facebook. And I sent her a meshes in 2011 and never heard back from her. So I kind of just dropped it. And then at the same time, I was looking for my birth father, but he had a very common name. So it was impossible for me to find him in 2011. So I kind of just dropped it. I just went, okay. I didn't hear any saying, who knows. Maybe I had the wrong person. Maybe the information was wrong. So I really didn't think about it again until 2017, when my mother, all of a sudden, a passed away. And even then I decided not to look at all. It wasn't again, till November of 2017. And my son was almost one and a half and he started walking, but he had a little bit of a gait issue.

Dan (10:59):

So our pediatrician said, Hey, why don't you go to a hospital nearby and get him checked out for his gait issue? See if it's something with his bones. So at his two year checkup, it turned out it wasn't any single bones, but he was still walking a little bit funny. So we went ahead and started physical therapy and it was in the August of 2018. The physical therapist said, he's not walking quite right. You really should go see a neurologist. So we went to a children's hospital locally nearby, and the neurologist checked him out and he ended up, they were thinking he had musclar dystrophy and ended up turning out that he didn't have muscular dystrophy, but he had a really large belly and he's had a really large belly since birth. So she poked around on his liver and stomach area and did an ultrasound and come back that he had an enlarged liver and spleen with elevated liver enzymes. So the next week we ended up going back up to that hospital and seeing the GI doctors and after meeting with the GI doctors, the doctor said, I bet he has a rare condition called glycogen storage disease or GSD. And if you type in GSD on the internet, you'll come up with German shepherd dog,

Damon (12:12):

Which is not your son. So what, tell me, tell me what is GSD and is it something, what does it mean for his future?

Dan (12:20):

Okay, well, so GSD is actually a genetic disorder. So it's basically where your liver normally stores sugar for night. So after you eat the insulin, we'll take the sugar and put it in the liver. So when you're not eating or sleeping deliverable, then release the sugar back out into the body. So it'll keep the brain active and muscles active for you. Well, with glycogen storage disease, the liver will take in the sugar, but it will not release it. So you could become hypoglycemic. And there's two forms of glycogen storage disease. There's a very severe form where you have to eat every three to four hours to keep your blood sugar up or you become hypoglycemic...