I don't know when I've felt so violated.  I feel as though life itself has been ripped out from right underneath me.

For the past six years, I have been fighting an off and on again battle, a battle that really seems to have no end.  I have been trying to get my little boy out of foster care because I want him back into my life.  

All because he has a condition that is beyond his control.

My son, Luca, who is six, was born with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), a rare disorder that causes bones to easily fracture and causes stunted growth, increased disability, and other problems.  For most of his short life, Luca has been in and out of the hospital or the Emergency Room because he suffered another fracture.  I can't tell you how many times he's had to wear some kind of cast or brace in order for his broken bones to heal.

People got concerned, so they reported us (me and my wife, Midge) to the authorities; they claimed that we were beating our son when we wouldn't even dream of hurting him in any way.  Well, the law got involved (thanks to a nosy neighbor), and sadly, Luca was taken away from us and we were stripped of all parental rights to him because "we were a danger to our son's well being".

The only time we can see Luca is if the foster family he is currently staying with brings him over for a supervised visit for several hours.  

We have another child, a daughter named Amelia, but she is healthy.  She stays with us, and she can vouch with her own mouth just how good of parents we really are.  We shower Amelia with enough attention, love, and discipline, to keep her out of trouble.  We spend  as much time with her as possible, teaching her things, buying whatever she may need in life, teaching her responsibility, and the like.  We were in the same process with Luca when he had another one of his fractures; he ended up breaking four bones in his leg when he hit it against the bars of his crib, and when the nosy neighbor got involved, she claimed we were abusing our son.  

This wasn't the first time something like this had happened to him (or to us).

That was when Luca was taken from us.

 As of now, the arrangement is permanent.  Another family is in the process of adopting him, the foster family he is staying with, but we are trying to fight to have that stopped.  Our lives have been miserable without Luca in it and I know Amelia, who is ten, misses her litle brother very much.  She was only four when Luca was born and when all of this legal mess got started.

We have another court date next week, our umpteenth one.  It seems we're always in the courthouse, at our lawyer's office, or at the hospital whenever Luca has a problem.  Whenever we see Luca, we have to have the police escort us, just in case "we try any funny business", as the one police officer tells us, when nothing could be further from the truth.

We have spent untold thoussands of dollars in court fees, and if this legal nightmare doesn't end soon, we just might end up in the poor house (or in the insane asylum, whichever comes first).  I don't know what is going to happen down the pike, but we are going to fight with every fibre of our being and get our little boy back.  He deserves to be with us, his true family!

You have not heard the last of our story.  This is only the beginning, and things are going to get uglier if the law doesn't get off our backs and stop accusing us of hurting our (handicapped) little boy when we had abso!utely NOTHING to do with his injuries!!

~End of part one.~