For the first six days of our mountain adventure we had nonstop illness.

It came in the form of raging fevers that lasted five days and a 48 hour stomach bug.

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We were fully prepared to learn after our week of testing at NYU, that the seizure activity was bilateral, and surgery wasn’t an option for our daughter Gabrielle.

Duke University had already told us that this appeared to be the case.

We entered the doors of  Langone Medical Center with guarded hope, knowing that without this surgery, daily seizures and suffering would become our new normal.

I honestly wasn’t sure I could accept that.

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Can I just capture for a moment what it’s sometimes like to travel with seven children… or maybe just any number of children at all?

Or perhaps this type of phenomenom is something specific to me and my little corner of chaos in this world.

We left our house at 8:00 in the morning, headed for the mountains of Tennessee, for a month long adventure.

We made a brief pit stop to have Gabby’s orthotic adjusted on the way out-of-town, and then of course it was time for breakfast.

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It was May 2008 and we found ourselves flying to NYC for a consult with a cutting-edge neurosurgeon. We were desperate to discover whether our daughter Gabrielle might be a candidate for a three-stage brain surgery. A surgery that could possibly extinguish the seizures that were robbing our child of normal development.

The plane sped down the runway and lifted into the air, when a sudden wave of intense nausea swept over me.  I held 18-month-old Gabrielle on my lap, attempting to keep her calm, as I breathed deeply through my queasiness.  I began feeling better, once we reached altitude, but the same sensation again overtook me as we descended for our landing at LaGuardia.

It was probably just a little motion sickness, I told myself.  I needed to get some food.

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