Mandi and Tyler Palmer have spent the past sixteen months navigating the mounds of paperwork and bureaucratic red tape in order to finally be able to welcome their son Hunter into their family.

Finally, on December 17th, the youngster was recognized as their son in law, and everyone was ecstatic with the development.

Since she was 15 years old, Mandi has been battling Crohn’s disease, and she discusses her experience in a blog post that she contributed to the Love What Matters website.

The patient, who is from Perrysburg, Ohio, has had scores of surgeries to treat the disease, and several of those procedures have rendered her stomach incapable of performing its regular functions.

The woman, now 32 years old, continues to suffer from malnutrition and is subjected to a variety of medical procedures and infusions in order to keep her health under control.

On the other side, after serving two deployments in Afghanistan, Tyler has developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

At the moment, he participates in therapy at the VA Medical Center on a consistent basis.

After the happy couple were married and moved to Ohio, they eventually came to the conclusion that it was time to start a family, but they ran into some difficulties along the way.

Mandi shared the following with Love What Matters: “We tried for years to get pregnant but soon came to the realization that it wasn’t going to happen, nor would it be safe for my body to sustain the miracle of pregnancy due to my illness.

We tried for years to get pregnant but soon came to the realization that it wasn’t going to happen.

We were completely devastated by the news, and we immediately began looking into other options for expanding our family and having children.

“We weren’t the type of people to just ‘throw in the towel’ and let our aspirations of being parents get destroyed,” she continued, “because of the health issues we’ve been given.”

After that, Tyler and Mandi became parents of foster children so that they could try adopting a child.

They had only been certified for a week when they received a phone call informing them of a newborn infant who need the care of some doting parents.

“When we arrived at children’s services, there was Hunter wrapped up in a receiving blanket, and our caseworker was holding him,” said Mandi.

“He was all wrapped up because he had been sick.” “He had just turned 8 days old and he was amazing in every way. Instantaneously, we found ourselves falling in love with him.

“It was quite clear that Hunter would turn out to be more than just our first child. He was both of our reasons to continue fighting the health battles that we have been dealt, and the “medication” that we took. He genuinely turned into our “why” in life.”

After that, in the month of December, Mandi and Tyler were finally able to finalize the adoption of their son, Hunter, and become his parents.

Hunter jumped for glee, turned to Tyler, and exclaimed, “Dad!” when the court announced the new name for the boy.

“We’ve come to realize that there’s a rainbow at the end of every storm, and we can’t express how grateful we are that we didn’t give up the battle.

He is our world, and the reason we continue to fight these fights is because of him. My husband claims that there is no treatment for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that is as effective as having his son assume our last name.

“We have realized that having the same DNA does not define a family. It all comes down to love!”