Ryan and I have been told multiple times that the song “I’m in a Hurry” by Florida Georgia Line describes our life. We were in our sophomore year of high school when we decided we were going to graduate a year early. We only needed a few credits each to be able to graduate and we didn’t see what the point of waiting a whole year for a few credits being chained to a bell that told us when we were allowed to leave and where to be next, or having to raise your hand to ask permission to go relive oneself. We decided that we would put in a little extra work for the next year to be able to graduate as juniors. However, that “little bit of work” we had to put ended up turning into us going overboard. We ended up taking more classes than we ever needed just because we could. I remember sitting in my high school English class working on my online college classes, just because I could. When we graduated we had a year of college complete!
December 24th of 2015, 6 months after we graduated from high school, Ryan proposed to me at our town square. I was only 17 at the time, but so excited. We started planning a wedding right away and announced in January that we would be getting married that June! We spent all of our free time, that we were not working or doing school work, planning for our wedding. Ryan was working 50-60 hours a week to cash flow our wedding and honeymoon. A lot, I know!
On February 14th of 2016. Ryan and I were both feeling icky and scheduled a doctor’s appointment. I ended up being sick with the flu and sinus infection but they weren’t sure what was wrong with Ryan (they figured dehydration and exhaustion). That didn’t stop him from working though, he continued to work, against doctors’ orders. He would come home every night in pain and wake up in pain every morning. I finally told him that he was going to the doctor, which he adamantly refused. We were able to get him into the doctors on March 15th, a day that we will never forget. He walked into the doctors office on his own two feet. The doctor took her stethoscope to check his lungs, and I could tell from her face that something was wrong. She ordered and x-ray of his chest, and next thing I knew he was being admitted into the emergency room. It was just him and I. They said that he had to have surgery immediately, and that if he had waited another day “he may not have been alive.” He had his right lung 3/4th of the way filled with fluids. The doctors said that he had so much liquid in his lung that it caused his heart to be displaced about an inch. They took him back to the surgical room, while I waited in the waiting room (it felt like an eternity). When the nurse finally came to me and told me I could go see him, I was drained emotionally and physically. When I went into the room, he had a tube sticking out of his right side, draining the fluid (which ended up being blood). We were then transferred to a bigger hospital nearby, where Ryan underwent another surgery to open up his lung and drain the remaining fluids. We spent 5 days in the ICU, I could not bring myself to leave so I stayed there, sleeping (if you can even call it that) in a chair and preparing for my college midterms. Ryan was down until the end of march. We became discouraged that we would have to postpone our wedding. However, we must have had a guardian angel watching over us. Ryan was up on his feet, working short shifts, and we were able to have our wedding completely paid for within the next month and a half. With only a month to go until the wedding we were working hard saving up money and putting our final details of the ceremony together.
When the time came, we made the 13-hour drive, with our family, down to Panama City Beach, FL. We had saved so much money during that month and a half we were able to fund our entire month honeymoon with cash. Yes, I said a month! We spent a week and a half in Panama City Beach, then spent another week and a half at Orange Beach, AL. When we left AL, we went to Gatlinburg, TN, from their we went to Ryan’s hometown of Macon, MO. It is crazy to think that just a short time before our wedding, we were doubting if we would even make it to this point. We have now been happily married for a little over 15 months.
I have now officially been on a college campus for a little over two years. I will be graduating this May 2018, with my bachelors in Education. I will be graduating at the age of 20 and I hope I am fortunate enough to be hired before the start of the 2018-2019 school year. Ryan on the other hand, started out in education, but switched his major to business administration after his first year. He will be graduating in December of 2018. We have put in a lot of effort and perseverance to get where we are at. Ryan will be graduating with his bachelor degree at the age of 21, but plans to continue his schooling in hopes of earning a master’s degree. We don’t know what the future holds for us, but we are excited to find out. While we may be “in a Hurry to Get Things Done,” I would not trade it for anything. Hopefully soon, since we are graduating, we can press the play button on the remote of our life so we are not continuously living in fast forward.
We Are Bradshaw's 