My Story Part 3: Have Baby, Will Travel?
BIG SIGH. Here I was again – in the hospital. This time is was more serious. My “personal surgeon” at Swedish Medical center ended up repairing the EG junction fix, put things back in place and anchored my stomach down, good and hard. It wasn’t going anywhere now! That, however, eventually became a problem. After about a week in the hospital, they sent me home to recover, but after a few weeks, I still couldn’t swallow liquids, so back into the hospital I went, this time for a G and a J tube placement. For those of you who don’t know what that is, a G tube is a feeding tube that goes directly into your stomach (so I could drain my stomach contents) and a J tube goes in my small intestine so I could tube feed myself. Fun times, right? The silver lining on this cloud, was that I lost almost all my baby weight, woo hoo! This made it difficult to return to work quickly as you can imagine, and, unfortunately, just after a few months on my new job, I had to take medical leave. Ugh. I can’t say my boss was too thrilled, but I promised to return as soon as I was able. It was a promise, though, I couldn’t keep.
So, while all of this was going on, if you can believe it, our lives got even more complicated. My hubby, John, was approached and encouraged my his employer to apply for a program called LGO (Leaders in Global Operations) at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). It’s a small program which allows leaders to earn their double masters in an engineering disciple as well as an MBA. In his particular circumstance, his employer would foot the bill and pay for almost all expenses for this program. I remember the day he came home as told me about it. It was like something he mentioned “off-handedly” - something he wasn’t too serious about. I told him he’d be a fool not to apply, but that he shouldn’t get his hopes up because the acceptance rate wasn’t very high (his employer only selected 1-2 employees per year) and of course it was MIT – The MIT. I knew my hubby was smart, but honestly I didn’t think he was “MIT” smart. (Sorry for doubting you honey!!!)
Anyway, before all this nonsense with my health started, my hubby filled out all the applications, wrote the essays, submitted his packet, and waiting patiently, but with pretty significant doubt I have to admit. Then it happened, and, it happened in my hospital room. I remember it like it was yesterday which is pretty impressive given the amount of pain meds I was on. I think it was like the 2nd or 3rd day of my tube placement when we got the news. I remember hugging my hubby hard, crying in both pain and joy, trying to wrap my head around this news. What would this mean? We’d have to move. I’d have to quit my job. What about my health? What about our kids? What about our house, our lives? Holy cow, what the heck was I going to do? I didn’t really think this would happen. Here I was, asking that very same question again, all the while remembering the song I heard in the car about “blessings”.
So here we are in the middle of a health crisis, a new baby and now, a once in a lifetime opportunity in front of us. This was not a decision was had to make lightly, especially in light on my health and our kids.
So…MIT? Were we really ready to pick up and move our lives across the country, leaving behind family, friends, doctors and our church? I knew I would probably be able to get excellent medical care there, because it was, well, Boston.
So, what were we going to do? Have Baby, Will Travel?
