dear tech gods, send help!

yesterday morning, i connected my iphone 7 to my imac to sync it in order to load a playlist of music onto my phone for my dance studio's christmas show.  after syncing my phone, itunes told me that there was a software update available for the phone (iso 11.1.2) so i clicked on it to do the update.  however, something must have gone wrong because the update never finished successfully and my phone has been stuck on a white progress screen for 24 hours now.

i have googled everything i can think of and have tried all of the "tricks" in the book.  i've held down the power button and the volume down button simultaneously until the phone shut off and then kept holding until the apple logo appeared . . . multiple times!  i've unplugged it from the computer, re-plugged it, plugged it into the charger, unplugged it . . . it died, it came back to life.  all of this and 24 hours later and i still cannot use my damn phone!

every time the phone turns back on, it goes to the white downloading progress screen and looks like it's nearly done (it's like hanging out around 99% completion) however it never finalizes.  i do not want to force a factory reset because i do not want to loose everything on my phone that is not backed up!  i have some important stuff on there from over the weekend from work which didn't get backed up yet.

i'm praying to the apple tech gods for help because i'm ready to throw this thing out the window and seriously need to be able to have access to my phone because of work!  it was a nightmare yesterday trying to figure out my sunday work schedule details with no phone (and nerve wracking driving in a snow storm knowing that i had no connection to the outside world).

. . . needless to say, if you need to get a hold of me you can't.  send an email or send up smoke signals.  in the meantime, i'll be over in a corner weeping and cursing technology.

oh it's definitely monday.
love, laurie