Made it to Portland and then K.G. got REALLY sick...

My eyes were so heavy I couldn't stay awake. I felt like someone had taken a syringe of liquid exhaustion and put it straight into my veins and it coursed throughout my body and laid me up on the couch where all I could do was sleep. I had a horrible pain in my spine and kidneys. I had a strange pain behind my eyes and a rash broke out on my skin. After a trip back to the doctor, more blood work, it was confirmed I had a nasty virus likely from a mosquito somewhere in Central America. Maybe Zika? Maybe West Nile Virus?

Sorry folks for the long hiatus without an update, but times have been tough. Last I posted from Portland, Oregon with our flight back to Costa Rica in only a couple days. My mom was kind enough to drive us to Portland and on the drive I could not keep my eyes open and slept the whole way there. Even Ville was concerned when I quit talking :) When we arrived at my sister's house, I crawled to her couch and stayed there. I couldn't eat or move. Ville called my doctor in Bend and she insisted I come back in. Ville called Delta Airlines (luckily all our flights were on one airline) and they were amazing in allowing us to push out our flights 10 days and not charge us anything. Poor Mom, back in the car and straight back to Bend and the doctor we went.

After some blood work, my doc confirmed I had a virus. After a review of symptoms, she confirmed a mosquito passed virus (they have an incubation period of 3 days to 2 weeks) and gave me an IV. I was in pretty bad shape and because my immune system was compromised, and the stress of packing in so much while in Bend did not help, I got a bad cold on top of it all. Damn! So I went back to my parent's house, straight to bed or the couch and have not left it until a few days ago. I am a tough cookie, and this nasty virus was the sickest I have ever been. It sucked!

I went back to the doctor a few days later and we did blood work to try and confirm if my virus was either Zika or West Nile Virus. We have since confirmed that it is not Zika, but don't have results back about West Nile. My doc is pretty awesome (Dr. Cooper at Center for Integrative Medicine comes highly recommended by me!!) and she said this virus would take at least 2 weeks to start feeling better and up to a month to get back to normal. UGH! And said no way was I well enough to fly back to bikes yet and we would need to push our flights out further. And unfortunately, there was nothing she could give me to make me better, I just needed to rest and build up anti-bodies to this crappy virus. So back to the couch I went and in case you all are wondering why you haven't heard from me, it was doctors orders to rest!! And I literally could not get off the couch or out of bed for weeks. Until now, I have started to reemerge.

​And last week, my beautiful, gifted, talented, larger-than-life cousin Amie passed away. I wanted to just share with friends and family who knew her and those that didn't, Amie was an extremely talented actress, singer and entertainer. When we were kids, she was chosen as the lead in the play Annie. With her fire red hair and pipes of an angel, she put on a private performance for all us cousin's in my Aunt's living room, that knocked our socks off! She was very passionate, dramatic, and loved her young daughter Dylann more than anything. When Ville and I were hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, Amie made it up to some ski resort on the trail early one morning to have breakfast with us. Family has been so important to her and all of us, leaving us all with such great memories of Amie and making it so very hard to say goodbye. 

Reaching out to all of you; friends, followers, and family, please just send some healing thoughts, prayers, and energy to my Aunt, Uncle, Amie's sisters and her daughter. My Uncle only recently has made it back to healthy from a rough battle with lung cancer (he is a Fire Chief in San Louis Obispo, CA and we were able to stay with them heading south on this ride) and this has been such a rough year for their family. Losing someone we love is so very hard, and they need lots of love and healing right now. Thanks for keeping them in your thoughts and prayers.

Ville and I are, for real this time, are on our way back to Portland this Friday. We are spending the weekend with my sister, brother-in-law, and brother and then our flight back to San Jose, Costa Rica is Tuesday night the 13th. Thanks everyone who discovered I was still here and checked in. And thank you to all who follow our journey and realized they hadn't heard from us and reached out. It's so nice to know how loved we are! Means a lot to us. And a HUGE thank you to my parents. For driving us back and forth, for housing and feeding us when we needed a place to go, and supporting our journey in so many ways!! Love you both. Will be better about our updates, thanks everyone for following. Until next time, keep on keepin' on...