Hey Everyone,
Sorry for not posting in a long time. You just get used to life and all the interesting stuff about moving to a new country becomes ordinary. But anyway...
We've been in Mexico for one year now. We renewed our Temporary Residency for another 3 years. After that we can apply for permanent residence. Which is the plan. We love it here.
My sister-in-law was surprised when we (mom and I) told her we were never coming back to the USA. But we can't fathom going back to that life. There's so many great things about life in Mexico that we'd have to give up in the USA:
1. Able to get my tramadol at any pharmacy, no questions asked. No need for drug tests or expensive services where I have to justify my need for pain relief.
2. Home vet visits so we can give our cats the best possible care in the most convenient way. We have a personal relationship with our vet. He knows our cats and our cats are used to him.
3. Better and less expensive medical care all around. The private medical care system is how celebrities get treated in the USA. We're eligible for the public system now, but we're not going to add ourselves to an already overburdened system.
4. Friends. Neighbors. REAL FRIENDS. The kind you can rely on to pick you up from the hospital or airport. I have literally NEVER had neighbors like this before. As I speak my neighbor is driving my mom to run an errand (because I'm too sick). Even with broken Spanish I have true friends here. I feel safe. Watched by my neighbors. Protected.
5. Nearly all the things I liked in the USA are available here in some way. Craving USA-style grapes? US style cuts of beef? Sams Club. USA-style fried chicken? There's one single KFC. But honestly, the Mexican options are better and cheaper.
6. Food delivery for $20 all-in. You can go crazy with that if you're not careful.
A million other things I'm not thinking of, but this was the best decision of my life, and I'm glad I'm crazy enough to do things like this. Moving back to the USA now would be such a negative adjustment for us. (Especially since we sold our house.)
I don't know if I updated this previously, but we have yet another new kitten. Yes, having close neighbors is great, but the problem is, everyone knows everyone elses' business.
What I mean is, everyone in our colony knows we're cat-lovers. We feed numerous outdoor cats. We put out quality dry food in a tub every night, with clean water, and feed our 'regulars' wet food twice a day.
So, when someone loses a cat, they come to our house and give us the picture. Then, inevitably, the cat comes to eat and we get them back to their owner. Great, right?
Well, everyone also knows that Frijole was dropped in our backyard and we took him in. The story of how he literally dropped out of the sky spread throughout the Colony. Great?
And then one day...someone ran up to our gate and threw in a sick kitten and ran away. -_- Seriously. My mom saw them do it but couldn't catch the person. (But we know who it is. The woman who cuts hair in her house had 8 grey tabby kittens. I know damn well it was her because she lives only 2 doors down and could run into her house before we caught her.)
Whatever. I mean, if she asked us to get vet care for the kitten we would have.
Quackers, our new little boy, was on death's door. Trembling. Not eating. Not drinking. Stuffed up. Coughing a horrible wet cough. We took him and put him in a cat container with a heating blanket. Mom and I thought he wouldn't survive the night.
The next morning...he was still alive. And rest and warmth apparently did him some good. He started eating and drinking ravenously. Great. So we got vet care for him and after two vet visits he was healthy.
The plan was to bring the healed kitten back to the hair dresser and pretend we didn't know it was her who threw him in our gate.
But this kitten...my God. We've never had such a loving and sweet baby before. He loves all people. No fear of anyone. He wants to cuddle all the time. He wags his tail and meows with glee every day when I come down stairs. He loves to be on shoulders or laps. He's just...too sweet and perfect.
So yeah. Now we have 3 cats. So much for traveling around Mexico.
Except we did travel. We're only 2 hours from Cabo. I wanted to check it out. My mom and I are seeing a neurologist who works half the time in La Paz and half in Cabo. His La Paz office takes months to get an appointment. We waited on the first one, but for the second I decided to go to Cabo and spend the night in a hotel there.
Cabo is not for us. The resorts control all the good beaches, and apparently they're dangerous because they get deep too fast, unlike the beaches in La Paz. There is only one highway through the city with ocean on either side and it's a pain in the ass. Everything I looked up on GPS is some coordinate on this highway, which is hard to find, so we ended up passing places we wanted to go and had to keep driving until we could get to an overpass to go in the other direction. Which we'd have to do until we could get to another overpass to get on the correct side of the highway again.
It's a huge pain in the ass. Add to that, everything is 'dumb American tourist' prices. We went to a pharmacy to see if Ozempic was cheaper. I thought it was. It's around $5000 pesos in La Paz for the oral pills my mom takes (like $300, the dollar has tanked so much since we moved here). I asked the guy how much and I though he said Dos Mil Pesos. Like $2,000 pesos. I was like, FUCK YEAH! Let me stock up. But my mom pointed out that he'd actually said: Diez Mil pesos. $10,000 pesos, or $700!! THAT'S WHAT IT COSTS IN THE USA FFS!
But that's who they cater to. Everyone was speaking English in the stores, which annoys me, because I know Spanish and I want to speak it. But I talk in Spanish and they reply in English and won't talk to me in Spanish no matter how much I try. -_- How the fuk would someone ever learn Spanish there?
We ended up just going to a nice restaurant to eat out (which wasn't all that good). Gringos were everywhere, often in bridesmaid dresses or party dresses. It's definitely not a city for locals.
Another problem is because it's on the tip of the peninsula with ocean on three sides, it gets HAMMERED during hurricanes.
On the way to Cabo I picked up a hitchhiker. I can't help myself. The poor guy was walking down the highway, miles from the nearest exit. He had been walking for 3 hours before we picked him up. We took him all the way home, and gave him $1000 pesos, because he was too broke to have any water with him. (He drank and ate ravenously the water and food we gave him in the car.)
Anyway, after he drank and ate he because talkative. Telling us about Cabo. Work. Etc. Mentioned his wife. My mom asked if he had kids. No. Their baby was killed in the last hurricane. They're still grieving and are not trying again yet.
MY GOD. That just broke my heart.
He kept saying that he's shocked women would pick up a man. Warned us it could be dangerous. I mean...yeah. But I can't help myself. And it's always worked out so far.
Anyway, we went to Cabo to see a neurologist (brain doctor). Why? Because I was forgetting words and my mom sometimes gets lost. Someone once told me that the brain is so good at compensating for problems that by the time you have symptoms you are already too far gone. So I figured forgetting words might be the start of something bad.
The first appointment we'd have said both me and my mom do not have dementia or altheimers. My mom is in great shape mentally for a 77 year old (it's true). And I also had no signs. But, I wanted to be sure, so we got MRIs.
The MRIs were a miserable experience. The equipment was old. It took half an hour. I remember an MRI I had in the US that took 3 minutes. So...one point for the USA here.
I was freaking over getting the results to my doctor, because I didn't want to drive all the way to Cabo and not have it. The people were like: Chill. We'll send it to you on Whatsapp and you can send it to him. One point for Mexico here. They give you your results. You don't have to pay a doctor to get them if you don't want.
Anyway, my brain was completely fine and normal. The only thing that showed up was sinitis . No issues in any way what so ever.
Mom had grey matter shrinkage that's typical with age. The brain is a muscle and she's been retired since 55 and doesn't do complex tasks. She needs to continue to learn Portuguese to build up her gray matter again. She also has a cyst that probably isn't a problem and isn't currently causing problems or pushing on anything. She needs to check it in 2 years with another MRI. But this is good news all around.
One of my goals of the appointment was to ask for the Shingrix shingles vaccine. It's been proven to reduce the chance of demensia, and may even be part of why my mother never had demensia like her mother and sister. She got the vaccine years ago.
The study showing that Shingrix helps prevent demensia was only a few months old so I thought I'd have to explain it to the neurologist.
HA! Not only was he on top of that, he had ordered the vaccine for his patients already because of it, and he was able to give me the first shot THAT DAY IN HIS OFFICE.
Damn. The medical care here is just fucking amazing.
Unfortunately, it made me horrendously sick. I'm just now getting my strength back. I missed a lot of work. It's going to be an ordeal trying to catch up. But, my risk for dementia is lower, and even though I really DIDN'T need to see a neurologist, I'm glad I did.
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