Goodbye Florida? in 2020-2024

I’m going to work on this entry little by little because I’m just not feeling well. I still don’t know if I have COVID, a cold, or if my allergies and asthma have simply gone haywire. I still feel like I have something, and I do hope that’s the case because then there’s hope for things getting better.

That doesn’t eliminate the fact that I have a constantly dry, stuffy nose that makes it hard to sleep because I can’t simply blow it out. I do have saline packets arriving today that I can put in the bottle the pulmonologist gave me. I just hate the feeling of how it stings my nose. It’s like when you get water up your nose when you go swimming.

I’ve been having a lot of shortness of breath, and yesterday was horrible. First, I was depressed and feeling totally hopeless all night long. Then when he got up, my mood improved, but physically, I really went downhill. It got scary because every time I fell asleep, I would suffocate awake. I just couldn’t get enough air in, and to make matters worse, I sleep with my mouth closed, as I’ve mentioned before. I started to fear that I would keep waking up until I was too exhausted to wake up and would suffocate to death.

So as exhausted as I was, we headed for urgent care, but they were closed due to the storm. We were surprised by just how much storm damage there was right here in town. There’s a restaurant owner by the little beach who has owned the place for decades, and his place was flooded. He said he’d never seen anything like it. One of the street signs we drove under, the kind that hangs over the street in a frame, was busted out partway so you could only read half of the street name. Tom saw pics of flooding and floating cars, and this wasn’t too far from us. But because we’re roughly 30 feet in elevation, we were spared. I just wonder how much worse it’s going to get until it eventually takes this place out.

Anyway, I joined a site called 7 Cups because it said they provided free counselors at any time. Well, counselors you have to pay for if your insurance doesn’t cover it, but they have what’s called “listeners.” I wasn’t too impressed. Someone asked what was going on, I told them, and then I had to wait 25 minutes for them to reply with “I understand.”

Although I don’t see what good it would do me, if I ever really feel the need for a therapist, I’ll just get one through my insurance that hopefully isn’t a delusional religious freak like Helen was. Helen was very nice, but I prefer not to work with someone with that kind of narrow-minded mindset and that puts so much value in unproven stories.

So I finally got to bed after being up for 20 hours and managed to sleep for 5 hours, but of course, we had another power failure. Tom said we should have expected it because usually, after a storm, they do a temporary fix before they make the more permanent one, and they have to cut you off to make the switch.

Since being up, I have been short of breath, and I still have that dry stuffiness. I wish I knew what it was! Even if I don’t have a cold or COVID, we know that this isn’t an allergy-friendly climate. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking by coming here, but we’re talking about heading back out West next year.

We don’t have a ton of money, so it’s not like we could just up and go. I just don’t know how the hell I’m going to get the energy to do it. Got to do what I got to do, though. I don’t know for sure where we would go, but I do know it won’t be California or Arizona. Probably not Utah either, but likely Nevada, and even more likely, New Mexico. I don’t know if we’ll get land or go to another park.

In a park, you have more security, but with land, you have more freedom. We’re also not going to have nearly as much money to work with since we’re selling a tiny house in a cheap state. Where we got $110K from the Cali place, this place is lucky to give us more than $40K.

There would also be no flying first class out there. Instead of shipping our stuff, we would probably throw it in a truck and drive it out. We’d probably pull the car behind it since I doubt we could afford to ship it. The real problem is where the hell to put our stuff until we get into a place. We can’t afford to have it shipped and stored until we’re ready for it. Besides, our experience with that was not good at all because they broke a lot of our stuff, and it took months to get it after we requested it. So we’d likely be going back out West the same way we went from Oregon to California. Nothing is definite or etched in stone yet, but we’re seriously considering it for several reasons.

I’ve got a list of pros and cons written out. Even though the place might be older and maybe even a bit of a dump, it sure would be nice to have a bigger place! I’m just concerned with how to get the energy (and the money) to pull it off. It almost hurts seeing Doc A run off every few weeks somewhere and all the marathons she’s doing while I’m grounded day after day, feeling like shit. And she’s barely a decade younger! It’s just so unfair. I’m happy for her but sad for me. I know I’m going to suffer most days, physically or emotionally, for the rest of my life, and that’s a tough pill to swallow. If it wasn’t for him, I would have been dead years ago.

Pros of FL:
- Warmer longer
- Cheaper
- Mostly older people

Cons of FL:
- Allergies (even Tom’s nose has been stuffier than usual)
- Fucked up healthcare
- Crazy traffic
- Planes
- Motorcycles
- Too many storms waking me up or threat of storms, plus hurricane dangers
- Power failures galore
- No Death with Dignity option
- State is way too red
- Unfriendly people (with few exceptions)

Tom got all excited earlier because he’s now 259 lbs and is under 260 for the first time in a long time. I noticed my weight was up a couple of pounds, and I was trying to figure out why since I hadn’t eaten much, and then I remembered the peanuts I got with our last order. Nothing puts weight on me faster than those.

My blood pressure was pretty low yesterday as well, and we’re pretty sure I got dehydrated and hadn’t eaten enough carbs. He thinks that could have accounted for some of the breathing issues. I still don’t know what to think, but I would like to get tested for COVID. The only problem with that is if it comes back positive, he’s mandated to tell the plasma place, which means he wouldn’t be able to donate.

At over 1,200 words, I guess this is a long enough entry, but I’m not ready to edit it. I’ll do it a little later and then post it.