the bad news and the badder news

I'll start out with two little bits of good news about our fingerprints:

--The USCIS does have a clear and reasonably sensible procedure for what to do when somebody's fingerprints are unreadable.  The person must make two attempts at the fingerprints, and if both attempts fail they can submit local police clearances for everywhere they have lived for the past five years.  (Why we can't submit the FBI clearance we got for our home study I don't know, but no, if their FBI check doesn't work then they'll only accept local police clearances as an alternative.)
--The office where Tim needs to go to do his fingerprints will let him come in anytime (so we don't have to wait weeks for an appointment).  The woman from the USCIS that I talked to today didn't see any regulations about a minimum time between attempts, but I doubt we could get away with doing it twice in one day.

The bad news:

--The nearest USCIS fingerprinting place is an hour and a half away.
--Tim's first failed attempt at fingerprinting does not appear to have made it into the system, so he will have to go back twice.
--The spot on his finger has gotten worse again, and a couple of other fingers are threatening to develop spots.
--One of the places we have lived in the past five years is China.  We actually already have a police clearance from there, but it will need to be translated, and I'm hoping it doesn't give us any problems.
--Another place we have lived within the past five years is Maryland.  Maryland, I just found out, doesn't do name searches when they produce local police clearances.  They require fingerprints!  (Kind of ironic, considering why we need this clearance in the first place.)  They will do a name search if they can't read the first set of fingerprints.  (And I do hope the woman was right about first--this is, after all, the state that made me re-do my fingerprints three times for Esther's adoption!  Although I think that was for a different category of background check.)

By far the easiest solution would be for Tim's finger(s) to clear up, pronto.  All prayers appreciated!