Hello folks, I'm Hunter.

A little over 30 years ago, I met the woman who would become my wife in a place that didn't actually exist. Specifically, a fantasy role-playing chat room full of nerds like myself where I had zero expectation of anything life-changing happening there. Definitely wasn't expecting to fall in love with someone on the literal opposite coast from me.

You probably know how the rest goes. <3

We tried living on the East Coast in New York for about a year but that turned out to be bad for multiple reasons. The cost of living was horrifying even back then and where we were living was unhealthy bordering on dangerous. So we packed up what stuff we had and took an Amtrak to Oregon with the kids.

First I'd fallen in love with my Raven; now I'd fallen in love with the Pacific Northwest. I grew up in the suburbs of Long Island and never felt at home. Here I found myself always wanting to go walking in the woods, on the shore, by the river, and it was because she brought me to these places she loved.

Our first apartment was a little place east of the Portland metro in a relatively nice suburb, we both found call center jobs quickly like most of us nerds convince ourselves we're supposed to do, and we were comfortable and stable for a pretty good while. We took the train to work, sometimes on the weekend we'd take it all the way downtown and just walk around, look at the shops. But it just didn't feel right. So, after we'd taken a trip out to the Oregon coast to visit some friends there, we decided to move to Astoria.

Yes that Astoria.

Yes of course we went to the Goonies house.

Anyway, we lived there at the coast for almost ten years and despite it being a struggle because of the very thin job market there it was wonderful. Our kids got to finish growing up there. I saw elk and bobcats and bears for the first time in my entire life. I hung off the side of the Pier 11 building with a paintbrush in my hand and watched a sea lion drift past me in the river below. Later we moved to Independence to take courses at the community college nearby but eventually we moved back to the Portland metro area looking for more solid work.

That didn't go so well.

We lost our place from a combination of medical issues and stress and we were homeless for a few months before ending up in a really abusive living situation for five years. Fortunately I discovered manufacturing work during that time, I discovered I was pretty darn good at it, and Raven and I and our son were able to pull ourselves out of that situation and get into an apartment of our own. We've been feeling stuck here for a while now; it's been over ten years, the pandemic left us out of work for long enough that we're constantly trying to catch up and falling behind. We've managed to keep the lights on but the area we live in is terrible for our mental and physical health. So, we finally sat down on September the 20th of this year before we all went to sleep (for night shift) that afternoon to plan things out. Our son intends to stay here in Oregon because he has friends and community here; we are looking at Ferndale WA for the same reasons. We decided to start downsizing all our stuff especially our old, heavy furniture. And we realized early on that we weren't going to be able to do it without outside help, so we figured we'd put up a GoFundMe that could build over time until we could afford to relocate finally. We wrote down the details of the ideas we talked about, everyone settled in, and I kissed Raven goodnight.

Several hours later I was being asked by a physician if he had my consent to give her a powerful clot-destroying drug that could potentially worsen the bleeding in her brain.

Raven suffered an ischemic stroke brought on by a stenosis (narrowing) of her carotid artery. She had severe aphasia causing her to not be able to remember words or to swap words out for similar ones. After being monitored for 24 hours she was moved to another hospital with better capabilities for treating stroke patients. They took excellent care of her while her neurological tests improved and four days later she was able to come home. I arranged to take paid leave for three months so I could help Raven take care of all her medical communications while monitoring her health and also getting a bunch of work done in the apartment and working on this fundraising pitch you're reading right now. I finished up the first rough draft, started making arrangements to return to work this week, feeling confident that Raven would be okay here while I went back to work.

This was not a correct assumption.

Raven had another (thankfully very mild) stroke some time between the 9th and the 11th, again caused by the stenosis in her carotid artery. This time it was only a few hours before she was back to her normal baseline for speech and motor control after initially losing sight in her left eye and being unable to stand unassisted. However the stenosis has gotten much worse and now absolutely has to be corrected surgically; as I write this we just got a referral to a vascular surgeon from Raven's GP and will hopefully be arranging the procedure as soon as possible.

All of this has made our want to relocate into a desperate need. My paid leave ran out a week ago and while our bills are paid up and we have adequate food we are late on our rent which must be paid with late charge by the 24th of this month and I don't honestly know how I'm going to handle January's rent. Our basic short term needs are just making sure we don't have to worry about eviction on top of everything else going on but long term, for her physical and mental health needs, we are trying to relocate to a single bedroom apartment in or near Ferndale WA. We have friends in the area and community, where here we have noneI would easily be able to get back to work in manufacturing but more importantly we wouldn't be alone anymore in a place where Raven can't even walk outside without risking a bad fall. We would be back where we could walk by the river again.