ON OUR WAY!! FINALLY!

 

Well folks, it is finally happening.

We leave today for Canada. So for those who are interested, here is an update.

We had planned to be on our way much earlier than this, but alas Geri was unable to travel.

She suffers from trigeminal neuralgia, and her doctor had prescribed Carbamazepine, which is the most common prescription for her condition. In very rare cases - and wouldn't you know it, Geri ended up as one of those rare cases - that drug can cause your neutrophils (white blood cells) to crash.

It meant she could not even afford to get a scratch or a sniffle or she would have to be put on massive amounts of anti-biotics and possibly be hospitalized.

Once off of the Carbamazepine it would take several weeks, in some cases months, for her neutrophils to recover.

They have sufficiently, though still slightly lower than normal, that her doctor has told us she can now travel as long as we get weekly blood tests to confirm her neutrophils are still improving.

Where we are moving to in Ontario, you have to be permanent residents for three months before you are eligible for their government funded health care program.

(omg, if only Americans could experience this benefit!) 

So, in the meantime I will continue to pay rent on our apartment here in Minnesota and we will be returning weekly for those blood tests. We also have taken out private health care coverage while in Canada till we have established a permanent residence, and will continue to maintain our coverage in the U.S. for now. 

During my previous 30 years in Canada I have made some good friends, and one of them has a fully furnished basement apartment and he and his wife have offered us to stay there for a very low monthly rent. This gives Geri and I the time to go home hunting.

I am determined to find either a cottage near town or a townhouse in town, but there are a few apartment complexes for seniors that have our interest as well.

Once we have a permanent residence, and once the blood tests confirm that Geri's neutrophils are back to normal, we will get rid of our current apartment and get movers to move our stuff to Ontario.

No problem finding a doctor in Canada either. The town we are moving to has a nurse practitioner clinic with a stand-by doctor, who can write prescriptions for us. Nurse practitioners do practically all that a doctor does including ordering tests, but are unable to write prescriptions, hence the need for a stand-by doctor. Geri is now on gabapentin which has shown no side effects. 

The long and short of this update is that I will still be absent for a while. But I have my laptop with me and will be dropping in to catch up nevertheless. Once settled in our new home I will be back into the swing of things here.

So, as before, I want to thank my other authors who have kept posting threads. And all my regulars for participating on my forum, though it being summer, participation is naturally down. 

I do intend on future threads, once settled, to do more personal blogs. Life in Canada, that sort of thing. 

Finally, my thrill level is through the roof right now. I feel like a kid in a candy shop. I will write more about why I wanted to move back to Canada SO badly in future threads. It has nothing to do with having anti-American sentiment but just a love of the people and land in Canada. 

In the 30 years I had lived there I never surrendered my American citizenship, which meant I couldn't vote there but was able to vote back in Minnesota when I moved back there. I have not yet decided whether this time around I will claim Canadian citizenship since this time I intend to live out my life in Canada.

THANKS FOR BEING PATIENT WITH ME. I know my personal ups and downs aren't of interest to everyone, but I would like to think I have made a few friends here who are interested in being keep up to date.

Anyways, that is enough for now, we are about to head out the door and my next update will be coming to you from Canada.

Cheers, eh.