Arianna’s Angels look to you to help a Manahawkin girl fly high again

What follows is neither a news story nor an editorial. But my discussions with the principals involved compel me to bring it to you, with the family's knowledge and consent.

A fresh-faced nine-year-old in Manahawkin starts experiencing a headache at her soccer game. A short while later, the pain is so unbearable that she's screaming.

Before the night is out, she is diagnosed with an extremely rare genetic brain disorder that requires doctors to open her skull and untangle her blood vessels, to avoid massive hemorrhaging.

It would be a gripping Hollywood movie, but it's happening to Arianna Muti, a victim of arteriovenous malformation (AVM), a condition from birth, undetected before this point, which leaves the veins and arteries in her brain in a tangled mess, strained, and prone to bursting. Her astronomical medical bills have prompted her friends to begin crowd-funding in order to help her stunned parents.

Full disclosure - the story of Arianna Muti arrived from my niece, Michele Spagnuolo, who has worked for many years with Arianna's mother Gina in a doctor's office. Michele has battled through Lupus and is no stranger to physical adversity. Arianna's situation boggled her mind, as it has many others.

Gina and Joe Muti aren't home-grown shore but neither are they bennies. The family, including Arianna's two sisters and the three family dogs, lived in Bogota but prevailed on his retired parents to move in with them in Manahawkin, in order to be in better financial shape to face the mounting bills.

Joe works for a sheet metal company, and has maxed out the amount of time he can stay off the job to tend his daughter, without the risk of losing the medical coverage he's got for his family.

The agony began on an otherwise unremarkable October 10. After being diagnosed with bleeding on the brain at Southern Ocean Medical Center, Arianna was flown by helicopter to Hackensack University Medical Center.

She underwent an emergency hemicraniectomy and a dissection of a hematoma. Surgeons left part of her skull off, to give her brain room to swell. Next was an angiogram, which confirmed AVM. Arianna was essentially in a coma for several days, during which she suffered a stroke.

Once she's regained some strength, doctors are going back in to remove the AVM condition. And it's still not over. Then she'll need a cranioplasty, to reattach that loose piece of skull.

The costs piled up quickly, and will continue if Arianna needs specialized equipment for care when she finally returns home. But Arianna's Angels are swooping in to the rescue.

The GoFundMe account raising money for her recovery is pushing toward $40,000, nearly half the optimistic goal of $100,000. Supporters are reaching the site directly and through Facebook.

We are about to enter the season of giving, and there will be no shortage of charities and causes that all deserve your consideration and cash. If your kids are healthy and robust, maybe the first thing you give is thanks. And, if there's any to spare, well, you'd know what to do.