17 Hours to Go

   In just under 17 hours we will be checking in for Ari's next surgery. She's getting very nervous as she really understands what is going on at this point. She had one of her worst days of the year at school yesterday. Complete meltdown until around lunch time. Today we have her is a little better frame of mind. We're planning on going to Applebees after work to get dinner and see the balloon man. Then Mom-mom Wood will be over so she can watch Lily tomorrow. Check-in at the hospital is at 5:30AM. Surgery is at 7:30. So far no calls to push it back or anything, so our plan is to head into the city around 5:00AM. Maybe a little earlier as there is major construction on I95 through most of Baltimore.
   Her pre-op went well as far as all the doctor visits went. Her hardware looks good for the first time since she's had it put in. Nothing is coming loose and everything is working as expected. Ari's body has not been playing nice with all the hardware and some of the things that have happened with it have forced her doctor to get rather creative to keep it all in place. He was joking around during the pre-op about how "...it only took 47 tries but we finally got it right." He's a great doctor and Ari loves him. He obviously doesn't take himself too seriously and has told us exactly what has been going on with all of these hardware problems, which are not unheard of, but still extremely frustrating. Overall though it means this should be a really quick adjustment and hopefully a fast recovery and a small incision.
   This has been one of the busiest years of our lives and none of it good. I can't even get in to most of it but within the next few months our lives might look very different than they do now. I have a feeling we'll be leaving Maryland behind and finding somewhere better to live. Whether that is back to NJ, over to PA or somewhere else entirely I'm not sure. Maryland is just making it very hard to continue to live here.
   As usual, I'll post all of Ari's updates here, starting at around 5:30 tomorrow morning. It's been good to have a place to go back and look over all that's happened with our family over the past few years. I'm glad I started this, even if there are quite a few rough time to go back and look at.