Monday and Tuesday, January 8th and 9th

Hello again,

Only 8 hours left until Tori, Maria and I are airborne!! Yes, Tori's passport and our visas DID ARRIVE at 10:00am Tuesday morning as anticipated!! That was quite a relief. We have packed 8 very large and heavy bags, 3 packed to the maximum carry on bags and 3 backpacks that will count as our 'handbags' though we won't let them pick them up ;-) The van and car are filled already with the majority of them and we'll be on the road to the airport at 5:30am and we'll need to be up in about 3 hours to make that arrival time.

We are as prepared for the journey as much as we possibly can be. Now we just need to complete the travel time safely and hopefully comfortably. The well wishing, numerous and supportive phone calls, emails, instant messages, comments on this site, visitors to our home and new donations as well have just been tremendous and so greatly appreciated!! It really is all so wonderful and it certainly inspires, drives and helps us move forward in helping Tori on her journey. With so much love, prayers and support for Tori she is surely going to make great and progressive strides in her recovery and hopefully break new ground for many others in similar situations to follow a stem cell treatment path. Our post stem cell treatment goals for Tori are for her to gain more control of her body particularly her arms and hands, more consistent chewing and swallowing so she can eventually have full meals, more awareness and stamina, more methods of effective communication like actually saying 'yes' or 'no' and finally for all of us - seeing that beautiful and radiant smile of Tori's once again. That alone would mean the world to us.

Tori has done great during the past couple of days even with all of the commotion revolving around her. Meredyth arrived today for Tori's speech therapy just in time to get on FoxTV 13 tonight :-) Thank you for everything you do for Tori Meredyth!! Tori also started selecting her card exercise answers by lifting her right hand and pointing or directing it towards the correct card. We hadn't seen that until this past Monday so hopefully it is another good sign of things to come. She is still very accurate in all of her answers. Lastly, when 4 of Tori's dance friends came to the house to wish her well I tested her once more. They surrounded her bed and I asked her where 'Annie' was and she immediately turned her head right and looked at her. Then I said "Here's Abi standing next to me" even though it was really Nicole. She looked at Nicole, then looked at me like I was crazy and finally turned her head right an looked straight at Abi. Yes Tori, we know you are in there and we want to help you come out of that unfortunately damaged body of your's... It will take some or more than likely alot of time, love and effort but it WILL HAPPEN!!

Alright, I guess I'll try and force myself to sleep for 3 hours. I'm not sure how successful I'll be because my adrenaline is running high at the moment. Maria and Tori have been sleeping for a couple of hours and that is most important anyway. During the travel time and stay in Hangzhou I will try and provide updates when I can but they might be sporadic for a little while. We shall see.

Thank you all so much for being here and for sharing and contributing in Tori's journey. I mean that from the bottom of my heart as your positive impact on Tori and our family truly cannot be measured.

The Schmanski Family
Tim, Maria, Tori, Whitney, Brendan along with Grandpa Paul and Grandma Sandy