Delays in New York

If you are a home body and have had to be away from home for almost 2 months you anticipate your departure for home with increasing anticipation. When is your delayed return home a good thing? When the doctor says that the results are looking excellent and that he would like to keep activating Hannah's device to the very end of the range of the device. On Thursday, Dr McCarthy had a good look at Hannah and the results of the activation of her device. He was very pleased to see the evidence of the bone lengthening by the increased gap between her upper and lower teeth. The larger the gap the better the results. The post that the device uses to spread the bone growth over is 30 mm long, so Dr McCarthy wants to activate the device right to the end. On a normal day, I activate the device twice but I am adding an extra turn today and again on Sunday to get to the end of the range of the post. This will mean that Hannah will have 29.5 mm of new bone once the bone has consolidated over the next 8 weeks. So we have changed our return date to Tuesday night and we are here for 4 more sleeps. Hannah took the change quite well, me, well it was really hard to change gears so close to our departure.

At our appointment on Thursday we also confirmed that Hannah will need to return to NYC for the device to be removed on December 30th. Initially we were scheduled to have the device removed on Dec 23 but the thought of being away for Christmas Day was not cool so we asked to have the procedure delayed a week. Thankfully, everyone agreed and we got the 30th date. So we will be spending New Years in New York City. No we will be going to Time Square to see the ball drop, unless we have a police escort and a private box. A 100 000 people or more in Time Square seems outrageous knowing how small the space actually is, but people flock there in droves. We can watch it on TV like the rest of North America.

We have being re-referred to Ronald McDonald House and hope to be able to stay at the house for the week that we expect to be here. This is a good thing as we are not able to take advantage of the Hope Air program in December. Hope Air paid for our flight to and from NYC this trip but they are not able to book during the peak holiday season. So we are going to have to fly via commercial carrier at high season rates. Ouch!

Our plan is to fly Keziah, Judy, Hannah and I and that will run about $2400 on Cathay Pacific. While this is by far the best price out there for those dates, it also means we fly the red eye. A hard trade off, but we will manage.

Life for Hannah and I was very busy with family and then Auntie Kath here. Starting Sunday night last, Hannah started waking up several times during the night. It would appear that the latest Indiana Jones movie was a bad choice in movies for Daddy and Hannah to watch. While Hannah managed the show well, her dream scape seems to have being scrambled rather seriously. We had 4 nights of fitful sleeps which impacted both our day time energy. Hannah and I have prayed through the images and impact of the movie as well as prayers of separation and burden bearing for our friends at the house. It would seem that at the same time Hannah was processing Indiana she was also processing the illnesses of several of the kids at the house. We have got to know a family who have 3 kids with a condition called Sickle Cell Anemia. This is red blood cell disease and can shorten life expectancy considerably if not treated. The boys are all going through treatment which includes a bone marrow transplant for a brother who is not a carrier of the disease. Hannah wanted me to tell her about the disease at 10 pm one night. I didn't actually know what the condition was so I told her that I would research it on the internet. At midnight that night she woke up right out of sorts. When I got her calmed down she asked me if I had found out about Sickle Cell. So we continue to pray and have now had two good night sleeps. Yeah.

With one weekend added to our time in New York, I hope that Hannah and I can spend some more time with our friends and maybe get out and do some last minute sight seeing. Or maybe not, it all depends on Hannah's vision of how we should spend our time. I can guess we will have at least one more trip to FAO Schwarz and Central Park.

Hannah has joined a group called House Heroes at http://dylanhartung.net/RMDH.html. Dylan and his family have called Ronald McDonald House for home 4 years as Dylan has bravely fought a battle against cancer. They created this part of their web site so that families can stay in touch after they leave the house. It is a really touching place for me to go. Not all of Hannah's friends are on the site, but some are and we look forward to visiting the site regularly over time.

So we have to unpack a bit to get more clothes out for our extra few days.

Blessings to you.

Hannah and John