Have you ever flown with a one year old? I hope for your sake, that you never have. If you know me really well, you'd know that for the last two months all I could think about was the "getting there" part of the trip. I worried so much that I barely would stop and think of the actual fun part. I had three fears 1. sharing a seat with a one year, who knows how to run, on a nine hour flight, 2. running out of gas, and 3. crashing and drowning in the Atlantic. According to statistics, the first fear was way more rational than the other two. But to me, it was a real possibility. At night I was plagued with nightmares of watching my favorite little man sink to the bottom... Enough with that. It's too sad to think about.
But cut to a week before my long dreaded flight. Anyone hear of the Malaysian flight on the Boeing 777? Well I did!! One night before bed, awake with anxiety of the flight, I went to check my Yahoo email. And there on the little newsfeed it read something like "Malaysian Plane Disappears, No Parts Found." In my head I'm thinking, "No Megan, don't read it. It's going to make things ten times worse." Well, I clicked the mouse and BOOM! before you know it I'm looking up every crash that took place over the ocean, I'm reading how many people have died in airplanes, and I'm uncovering things that should not have been uncovered. By the end of the night (it was well into the wee hours of morning) I had fears of alien abductions and Bermuda-like triangles. After I had my quiet panic attack, I couldn't very well hyperventilate when I have a sleeping one year old next to me, I finally fell asleep. I woke up and went to find my mother-in-law, Char. I told her about what I had discovered on the internet, and much to my surprise she had already heard about it and was hoping I wouldn't stumble upon it. Come to find out, many people I knew had heard about it and tried to keep it from me. If only they could delete news posts on Yahoo.
Then it was two days before my flight. And almost everyone that I told my flight course two was amazed that I was going directly to London from Denver. Apparently flights usually stop in New York or Dallas. So this amplified my fears of running out of gas. And then to make matters worse, a friendly neighbor jokes about running out of gas. He wasn't aware of my fears.
The day of the flight was a stressful one. The day before, I had an appointment at a Urologist because I had noticed blood in my urine for 6 days straight (gross, I know).After a scope of my bladder (not as fun as it sounds)the doctor was concerned, especially with me going out of the country. The likely culprit, was cancer or kidney stones. I was hoping for the kidney stones. Well after lots of haste and phone calls they were able to get me in for a CT Scan at 11:00am on the day of my flight. I had to leave for Denver at 2:00pm!! First of all, I wasn't to happy about having to be pumped full of radiation (like 500 X-rays) and contrast dye. And then, the question popped into my head "can I breastfeed if I get this test done?" The nurse then gave me the full disclosure. The amount of toxins that could enter the babies system was .01%. If you know me, I don't even like vaccines so this little bit of toxins really scared me for my baby. But beings as I was going on a nine hour flight, my breast milk was what I was relying on to make it through the tedious flight. After about 30 minutes of debating, even though we were already pressed for time, I decided to do the test. After downing three bottles of water, being pumped with toxic dye through an IV, and sitting in a giant donut for 45 minutes, I found out that I have a 2mm kidney stone in my left kidney and that I'd be okay traveling. Thank goodness because I probably would have gone anyways, these tickets were not cheap!!
After we leave the doctors office, the race against time began! We headed home, packed my food (the airline doesn't provide meals for babies or people with multiple allergies), and got all of my stuff together. We loaded up in the car. It was Char, my sister-in-law Leah, our good friend Paje, and A.J. in his carseat. I hung my head against the seat, as I was coming to the realization that this was really happening. Soon I would be suspended 36,000 feet above the ground, and I'd be away from my family and the place I grew up for 2 and a half months.
