22 days and counting!

So the surgery is 22 days away. Brianna asked me today about how long she will be out of school. I let her know that we are planning on her being out for 1 week. Hopefully she will feel all better by then. She will miss gym again for a few months. She broke her arm last summer and was out of gym classes until December 2007. Now she will be out of gym again. She definately does not like being taken out of class. But maybe that will give her a bit more time to learn some signs with Mrs. Sara. We will see how everything plays out.
I have to keep explaining to people that this is not an "instant fix". For some reason, people seem to think that she is going to go in for her surgery and come out hearing everything clear as day. I don't know, maybe it is just because I have done all my research, and I know what is going to happen. But I just think "duh". Why would people NOT do this surgery if it was that simple. Oh today I am going to go in for a bit of surgery and come out with no hearing loss at all. I am happy that people are concerned, or at least remember that we are going to be going through this, but geeze, it makes me feel like I am getting some second rate surgery for Brianna. Oh we can't afford the miracle insta-fix operation. So she gets the CI surgery.
Ok, enough frustrated whining! Brianna seems so excited. She talks about it every day. I really hope that I have done a good job explaining the process to her. She seems to really understand that she will be completely deaf for 4 weeks, and then once activated, she may or may not hear sounds again. I have tried to tell her that she will have to learn to hear all over again. I can't really give her too much more than that because I haven't experienced it. I guess we will just have to go through all this together. Good with good and bad with bad.
The most important thing to me is that Brianna is happy with the decision that I have made once she is older. Obviously at 7 she can't make the decision for herself. I just hope that I have made the decision that she would have made for herself. Time will tell. She is a strong, strong girl. She will be fine. Right?
A note on me right now. I am in a good place today. I seem to be on this emotional roller coaster. Some days (like today) I feel completely at ease with this decision. I have a feeling that it will work out for Brianna, and I am almost excited. Then I have days where I am scared to death, unsure and nervous. The other day I actually thought that maybe I ordered the wrong implant. For some reason they all blurred together, and I was just distraut over the functions and differences in them. I called the ENT and confirmed that I did infact give her the correct order. Whew. My mind was playing tricks on me. Stress maybe? I really need this to work out for Brianna. I go through the day, almost every day wondering if the other kids at school pick on her, or don't want to be friends with her because of her hearing loss. She hasn't been invited to a single birthday party, and I wonder why? If I really think about it, she is only in 2nd grade, and she has plenty of time for parties and friends. I spoke with Brianna's teacher about this very thing. She said that the class as a whole is completely understanding of Brianna's situation, and they are wonderful with helping her if she did not hear an instruction. On that point, I felt better. So here's to a good day. We will see what tomorrow brings. I really can't wait until my parents come up here to help out. The family support will be great. I won't lie, this year has been the hardest year for me, emotionally anyway. I can't wait to have them here to just be here. There's definately a difference between talking to family on the phone, and having them here in person. (We live in NY, my parents live in GA).
That's enough for tonight. We will see how it goes....