<p>The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) used to have the most experience (pioneered?) in treating Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. (I say “used to” simply because I trained several years ago and don’t know their current experience. I would guess they would still be the most experienced.) You might want to look into the number of surgeries and experience of each center with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome before you make a final choice. Your Pediatric Cardiologist can probably make a better suggestion regarding this than I. As you know, this syndrome is exceedingly difficult to treat and you want to be somewhere they have LOTS of experience treating it AND the ability to do a transplant. </p>
<p>Hugs to you. I would absolutely recommend Pitt and Pittsburgh for your needs, and for realistic prospects for your education, your children’s education and medical care, and even for finding jobs.
In addition to Pitt, you can also check out Chatham College in Pittsburgh, which also has special consideration for non-traditional women and women with children.
I would disagree with the poster who suggested Mt. Lebanon or Cranberry. You can live within fifteen minutes of the hospitals and universities and you can get good housing prices. If you are a student, you get a pass to ride the bus for free. While many students do live in Shadyside and Squirrel Hill, there are lots of budget-minded young families who move to Highland Park, Friendship, Bloomfield, and Greenfield. Expect it to be a lot more urban than what you are used to - but you can still get an apartment in a house with a yard and trees if that is what you want.</p>
<p>Pennsylvania and New York make good sense because your family is nearby. If you are open to considering other locations that meet your needs for good special education for child 1, good medical care for child 2, good English department for yourself, and decent employment prospects for your husband, you might want to look at U of Iowa (Iowa City) and U of Minnesota (Twin Cities).</p>
<p>A huge consideration, though, is this: how do you plan to obtain health insurance, especially for your children? If you can get it through an employer, great! If you plan to qualify for Medical Assistance or CHIP, you may want to look at the eligibility in the states you are considering. Will you have a gap in insurance?</p>
<p>I CANNOT stress enough that you need to be very close to a Children’s Hospital. </p>
<p>You state you drive a few hours each way now to the hospital, but you neglect to take into account the traffic patterns in the regions you are considering. You can live/go to school with 20-25 miles of Philly, but the commute to CHOP based upon the available office hours can be 1 1/2hours one way during rush hour traffic. And our rush hour is actually several hours (6:45 am - 8:45 am) and then again in the afternoon (4-6:30). If surgery is eventually needed, you will need to commute back and forth during the day to care for your older child. Please consider a school and home closer to the hospitals. </p>
<p>There are plenty of suburban/semi-rural areas around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. In Phildelphia, you can consider living in New Jersey (high taxes in some regions) or Delaware and still have close access to CHOP and many college choices. </p>
<p>I think U of Pitt is a wonderful choice. I also second Bryn Mawr in the Philadelphia region. Plenty of other schools in the Philadelphia region, but Bryn Mawr is a top school that truly supports women and could be a very strong support system for you.</p>
<p>Pittsburgh would be great medically, and the Pitt English Dept. is excellent. There are other fine schools in the Pittsburgh area as well, and the University of West Virginia is less than an hour away.</p>
<p>Other choices might be state flagships with medical schools attached, where you could get help for your kids and an excellent education in the same location. I know parents of special-needs kids who’ve come to UVA, where I work, primarily because of the health infrastructure in Charlottesville, and only secondarily because of the quality of the school. UVA is a tough school to gain admission to out-of-state, and expensive to boot, but it does have a good need-based financial aid program. The University of North Carolina is also in an area with a lot of medical resources.</p>
While the “mountains” in Pennsylvania are more like foothills out west, the drive from Penn State to Pittsburgh, along route 22, requires climbing over the Alleghenies and can become difficult to traverse in the winter, especially around Cresson Mountain. Access in and out of State College is not great. In the winter it can become a 3-4 hour drive in each direction, and hopefully you aren’t hitting construction (which is always going on on 22) or the Squirrel Hills tunnel at rush hour coming into the city. It really is not a drive you want to be regularly making. The less hilly alternative requires driving out of your way to the turnpike, which is longer.</p>
<p>Regarding education choices in Pittsburgh, Pitt is equivalent to Penn State. One is not really better than the other (Pitt is smaller and more selective) but they have different strengths> PSU’s is in engineering, agriculture…Pitt’s is in health sciences and humanities. The settings are very different, Pitt is very urban, PSU is very rural. Their English departments are ranked right next to each other (as is Carnegie Mellon’s) by US News’ grad rankings if that means anything at all. Pitt and CMU have great reputations for creative writing (Michael Chabon is an alumni of Pitt’s program and his books Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonderboys were based on his experiences there), Penn State has a great rep for journalism. There are a lot more educational choices in Pittsburgh, as mentioned above, like Duquesne, Robert Morris, Carlow, Chattam, Carnegie Mellon, and being in a city (Pittsburgh or Philly) would be more conducive to finding jobs, literature/english scene/publishing, etc.</p>
<p>I would not recommend living in and around Ithaca NY if you need very specialized health care services. While this might be an attractive idea coming from your current location, central NY has harsh weather for many months in the winter, and if you had an emergency, it could be a real problem trying to travel.</p>