Surgery Tomorrow...Please Pray For Avery!

Hello, First, I would like you to know, a sweet girl we got to know from Mayo needs our prayers. Please pray for Danielle. They have found a spot on her lung and are doing a biopsy to see if it is cancer. You can give her support at carepages.com enter HopeforDanielle. Our first appointment with the surgery team went great. The neurosurgeon Dr. Souweidane was wonderful. Very kind and Avery liked him too. We have an early morning tomorrow. Avery will have an MRI of her brain before surgery at 6:30am. This will be her first without sedation. This MRI will help the doctor with the placement of the ommaya. Surgery is scheduled for 9:00. Please pray everything goes great. She will then spend the day/night at New York Presbyterian Hospital in the ICU. Avery is not excited about this overnight. You see here in New York space is limited. In the ICU you share the space with two other patients and only one parent can spend the night. I'm guessing it will be me. We are spoiled in Minnesota. After the surgery appointment we had counts checked at MSKCC. This place was a Zoo today. It was nearly a cattle call. I could not believe how many patients. Cancer Sucks! I was not pleased with the technique of the nurse drawing Avery's blood. I had to ask her to scrub for longer than a second. She was in such a hurry. I hate rushy people, they make me nervous. Avery's Hickman would not draw blood (as usual) so we really had to pull and maneuver Avery. Finally she got all the blood they needed for her labs. No platelets she was at 112,000. We waited another hour to see the nurse practitioner. She was great, very funny. Avery started the medicine to protect her thyroid today. We found out we may actually be here for three weeks. If anyone wants to come out and help me let me know. Avery had fun tonight at the House. We met a few new family's and Avery did several crafts. A group of men from a local restaurant brought food for the guests. It was very good. For desert they had cheese cake and chocolate moose cake. Yummy! If you feel charitable the Ronald McDonnald House is an excellent charity. We could not do this without being able to stay here. The nearest hotel is $300 a night and here it is only $35 plus you get a community feel. Everyone here is going through similar struggles as you. Please, Please, Please say a prayer for Avery. Please pray surgery will go great and that Avery recoverys quickly with no complications. As always Thank You for walking side by side with us through this journey, sharing in the joy's and the sorrows. We could never get through this without the support of our family and friends. Thank you for the positive thoughts and prayers. God Bless and Good Night! Team brAvery