 Hi friends welcome back to my channel and a special welcome if you're new here. My name is Jen. I'm a certified weight loss and nutrition coach and I'm on WW personal points. Happy Sunday! Today I'm sharing with you a major massive life update as well as what we're going to be doing here on my channel moving forward. Lots and lots of updates for you. Please give this video a big huge thumbs up. It really helps out my channel and of course make sure you're subscribed and your notification bell is turned on so you never miss any future updates or videos in general. Check out the description box down below for nutrition coaching where I offer personalized to you macros and calories as well as one-on-one coaching if you would like to chat with me directly. Links, discounts to my favorite things and my Facebook group definitely join us over there. That's how you can keep up with me. A date today is down in the description box for you as well. So I have lots of updates for you so let's jump in. So today I'm coming at you with a pretty major life update. A lot and I mean a lot has changed in my life over the course of the last few weeks that are making a huge impact on my personal life, my family life and of course on my channel here on YouTube. If you follow my channel you know that my husband Troy has quite a few medical issues. Medical issues that have been ongoing for the last 10 years or so but over the course of the last five or six years the medical issues that he has some of them have gotten better and some of them have gotten progressively worse. I could go on and on with his medical situation but in a nutshell my husband was born with an underactive vena cava and what that is it's the part of your body that regulates blood flow. Which is your blood from your upper extremities to your bottom extremities. He has a vena cava but it's underdeveloped. Most peoples of vena cava you know are the size of a pinky around for blood flow. His is about half to a quarter of the normal size so what happens is he doesn't have a lot of blood flow from his upper extremities to his lower extremities. Back in 2018 and 2019 I shared here on my channel that he was suffering from dbt or deep vein thrombosis blood clots pretty regularly. He spent a lot of time in the hospital. He was in the hospital for weeks at a time. He was entering the hospital with blood clots once a month once every couple months and it was just very very hard on him emotionally and physically. Lucky for us we were able to find a doctor at the University of Washington Hospital in Seattle in 2019 that was able to help remedy the blood flow from his vena cava into his legs where he was having the majority of his blood clots and issues. We flew over to Seattle in December of 2018. The vascular surgeon there ended up putting eight stents the same kind of stents that we would that you would put in your heart into Troy's vena cava. Eight of them. He was in surgery for eight hours which is a long time but those eight stents were able to open up his vena cava to allow for more normal blood flow. Now he doesn't have normal blood flow. He will never have normal blood flow but these eight stents that were put into his vena cava were literal health game changers for him. It allowed him to continue working. We were thinking in 2018 that he was going to have to resign from his job and apply for social security disability. The vascular surgeon in Seattle literally saved his quality of life by putting those stents in which allowed him to live more normally. He still suffers from blood flow issues. He gets a lot of open wounds and ulcers on his leg. That is caused from the pressure building up in his legs and that pressure not having anywhere to go. It'll go to the surface which creates open wounds and ulcers. They're very very very painful. They have to be treated immediately or they can spread. He could end up having open wounds or ulcers over his entire leg which has happened in the past. So whenever he gets an ulcer or an open wound he goes to what is called wound care. They treat those open wounds, those ulcers, they wrap them up, they clean them up and with going to wound care once, twice a week, we're able to keep those ulcers at bay and sometimes get rid of them completely. They don't always stay away. They generally come back but he can get rid of them and live a better quality of life by going to wound care every couple of weeks. Also because of his blood flow issues he has had high blood pressure since he was in his 20s and he does take blood pressure medication and because of being really susceptible to blood clots, he has to take a blood thinner every day and have his blood checked once a week to make sure that it's at the right levels. And in addition to all of that he suffers from neuropathy. My mother-in-law passed away in August of 2020. From complications from COVID she also had a lot of health issues. She was in an assisted living home. She was in a wheelchair since she was in her 40s because she also suffered from very extreme neuropathy. My husband's neuropathy is about mid-calf down through his feet. He can feel pressure so he's able to drive because he can feel pressure. He's able to walk due to the pressure but he doesn't have a lot of feeling in his feet overall. And if you know anything about neuropathy as you get older it gets worse. So we know that as he continues to age the neuropathy piece of his health issues is going to become further and further advanced. And because of the blood flow issues and the neuropathy he suffers from his legs feeling really, really heavy. It's hard for him to walk, sit, or stand for long distances due to the blood flow and just his legs feeling heavy and of course then neuropathy as well. You may also know that my husband delivers milk for a local dairy. He's been in the union and with this dairy for over 20 years. He drives a semi-truck and delivers to stores like Walmart, Winco and other local and long-distance grocery stores. So he ends up not only sitting for long periods of time. He does a lot of walking and he does a lot of standing all of which are not recommended for his health conditions. So as he's gotten older like I mentioned everything is just getting harder and harder for him and the issues that he's suffering especially the open wounds and ulcers are becoming more and more common and the neuropathy is progressing as well. So we had to make some really, really hard decisions when it comes to my husband and his job and what he's going to be doing moving forward. Now he is about seven years away from being able to retire from the union. You have to have years put in as well as age. I believe it has to match up to 88 if I remember correctly and he's about seven or eight years away from being able to officially retire from the union. Get his pension, get his pension medical and at that point he could either choose to get a different job or he could choose to just basically be retired in his early 50s. So we talked a lot about what that looks like. What do the next seven or eight years look like for him? Is this the job that he should or could continue to do for the next few years in order to retire and get his full union benefits? We talked about this for days, I mean days, weeks and we came to the final decision that we don't think that it's in his best interest for his health or his overall quality of life to continue working. He got a CDL right out of high school. This is the only type of job he's ever had. He's always driven trucks whether it be for seven-up bottling or food services of America that delivers food products to restaurants or his current job of delivering milk. He doesn't really have another skill set. He's not good with computers. He has really no interest in computers. He can't really do an office job or a desk job because again he can't sit stand or walk for long periods of time and there's really just nothing else out there for him to do that we can think of. So we made some really really hard decisions when it comes to his employment and what he should be doing for his health because honestly his health matters more than anything that in his quality of life. So after careful consideration we decided that it would be best for him to go out on FMLA which is family medical leave. You can take that for your family or yourself so that he can get these ulcers and open wounds on his leg healed up go to wound care and really the best thing for his legs and his neuropathy is for him to elevate his legs throughout the day to really take the pressure off and to get the blood flowing back up to his upper extremities and then back down to his legs. So in order to do that he has to take time off of work so that he can get these ulcers and these open wounds healed so we decided that starting March 1st he would go out on 12 weeks or three months of FMLA. Lucky for us it is paid in the state of Washington where we live he actually receives about 90 percent of his pay and because he's in the union they cover his union dues and his medical for those three months. That would give him time to heal and to really get his legs in a better position where he could possibly go back to work at the end of those 12 weeks. So the next thing we had to discuss is what happens after those 12 weeks. Does he go back to work June 1st and again after lots and lots of conversations emotional conversations on both parts we decided that it's not in his best interest to return to work and like I mentioned there is no other skill set he's not able to get his retirement because he doesn't have the years and the age in so we decided that we would go ahead and apply for social security disability for him. Back in 2018 before he had his surgery and had those stints put in his vena cava his vein and neuropathy doctor recommended that maybe it's best for him to go out on disability because he does need to rest his legs and elevate his legs frequently throughout the day. So we made the really hard decision that he wasn't going to go back to work after the 12 weeks. So what that means is come at the end of May the beginning of June he will be resigning from his position. What that also means is that he won't have an income after those 12 weeks nor will he or myself have medical insurance because I am on his medical as you know I am self-employed I do YouTube and I do real estate so I don't have my own medical insurance. So that was something we really really had to think about because with all of his medical issues my husband cannot go without medical insurance. So we resigned to the fact that we would be paying out of pocket for medical whether that's through COBRA or through the health care system we would have to be okay paying out of pocket for his health insurance and potentially my health insurance. What happens with social security and disability is most of the time you are not approved the first time with applying. It takes five to six months to get an answer back from social security and once you are approved you have a five month waiting period which means that for five months after approval you don't get paid and on the six month you get paid no back pay but you will start earning your benefits on the six month and really the caveat with disability is you are not eligible for Medicare or medical insurance until you have been on disability for two years. So with the waiting time to get approved if you're lucky enough to get approved the first time in those five or six months you don't actually get medical insurance until two years from the date that you applied for social security. So here we are in the same boat without medical insurance especially for him. We do not qualify for Medicaid because we're married and I make too much money for him to qualify for any type of benefit from the state so that led us right back to having to pay for our own medical out of pocket. We also have a mortgage because we do have a house payment. We don't have any credit card debt but we do have three car payments as well as a payment on our camper that we had a few years ago that we ended up selling. We weren't able to sell it for as much as we owed on it so we actually have a payment on that as well. So basically we have four payments every month in addition to our mortgage and what we're going to have to pay for healthcare. So that was the next bridge that we had to cross is are we financially able to basically live on my income paying our mortgage paying our car payments and paying for healthcare and of course being able to pay the rest of our living expenses as well as put food on the table and gas in our vehicles. The answer to that question is it's doable. It will be hard for us but it's doable. Then we thought about what keeps us here in Washington other than Troy's job and my mom. And we talked about that a little bit if you didn't know my in-laws live in Arizona they moved there a couple of years ago and we don't see them very often which is unfortunate for us because we love them and we love spending time with them. And my dad did pass away in 2013 and he is buried in the National VA Cemetery in Phoenix Arizona. So we thought a lot about what keeps us here and of course my mom was a big piece of that. I am an only child. I lost my dad unfortunately several years ago so really my mom is the only family that I have and Troy doesn't have any family here other than my mom. So we talked about whether or not we should stay in Washington stay because of my mom. I called her up. I had a pretty hard conversation with her that involved lots of tears but she told us to do what's best for us and if that means not staying in Washington then she would eventually follow us to wherever we went because she's getting older and she's going to need me to help take care of her as she ages and of course she won't be able to stay in the home she owns and maintain that home as she progresses in age as well. So she reassured us that whatever decision we made that she would fully support us whether we decided to stay in Washington or not. So that led us to our next conversation and that was whether or not we stay in Washington. It's cold here. We have winter, fall, spring, summer. We have all the seasons here and the cold in winter is pretty hard on Troy's body. Anytime you suffer from any type of medical issue that is debilitating to your body the extreme temperatures whether it's hot or cold can play a negative part on how you're feeling in those seasons. He definitely does better in the spring and the summer when the temperatures are warmer. So that led us to our big big decision and that was that we have decided to move. We are actually moving out of state. Our original goal was to move late spring early summer. So we started the process of looking into where we wanted to move and logically we decided that we would move to Arizona. Not only are my in-laws there but my dad is there and it's warm and the cost of living in Arizona is much more affordable than Washington and honestly more states in the United States. Take it from me. I'm a realtor and I know the market inside and out. So we decided to start the process of looking to see what's available home wise in Arizona knowing that we would sell our house here and because the market is so crazy here that we would make quite a substantial profit on our house so we would be able to put a large down payment down on whatever home we chose in Arizona. So we started the process. We acquired a realtor and we started the house hunt. Well within a week we found the perfect house for us. I mean the absolutely perfect house. It is all one level. It is all remodeled. It is a little bit rural. It's in Veil, Arizona which is about 20 to 30 minutes outside of Tucson and is only about 30 minutes from my in-laws who live in Green Valley, Arizona. We loved that it was a little bit rural. Just kind of we live rural right now when we really enjoyed the space and we don't mind the little bit of commute to get to amenity. So we fell in love with this house immediately when we saw the pictures. It was everything that we wanted in a home so we decided to go ahead and take the plunge and put in an offer contingent on us selling our home here. We would need the profit from selling our home here to put down a pretty substantial down payment on that house to get it to where our mortgage is smaller and doable for us. So we put in an offer and the next day at 9 a.m. less than 10 hours later it was accepted and it was very very exciting but very very scary because that meant that we had to get our house on the market immediately and we had one week to get our house under contract. Now I knew that our house would sell quickly because we live a little bit rurally. We have acreage. We have a five bedroom three bath house. It's all one level so it's perfect for a family or perfect for someone like us that doesn't want a lot of stairs in our house. So we knew I knew that it would sell quickly and lucky for me in addition to that I'm a realtor so I was able to list my own house which saves me half of the realtor commissions which is pretty substantial. It's about three percent that I saved of the list value of our home. So we had pictures taken. We had a sign put in the yard and we put our house on the market and within one day we had two offers which was super super exciting. One of those offers was full cash. Now it was a little bit below what we're asking which in this market is pretty unheard of since it's quite the seller's market but it was an offer we just couldn't pass up so we went ahead and accepted the offer. So when someone buys a home with cash the process is a very very expedited because there is not a requirement for an appraisal. So once the home gets through the inspection phase which is generally within the first week week and a half after an accepted offer then it moves rather quickly to closing generally about two weeks and because we are putting such a substantial down payment on our house in Arizona we don't have to have an appraisal either. So our process there is pretty expedited as well the inspection and then a couple of weeks to closing. So what this means is that we're moving way faster than we ever thought that we would be moving. It is February 20th that I'm filming today's video and our date to close on our house is March 14th and we will be in Arizona on March 16th less than one month from the filming of this video. We've already been through the inspection on our house and I'm actually flying down tomorrow to Arizona to attend the inspection on our new house and actually see it for the first time in person. We did a video walkthrough with our realtor but we have not even seen it and that's scary too to purchase a house site unseen. Now lucky for us our in-laws are closed so they drove out to our house yesterday and they called us and said it's beautiful it's even prettier in person than in the photos and they think we made a fantastic choice which really gave us a huge huge sigh of relief. So I'll be in Arizona for a couple of days for the inspection. I'm going to be video chatting with Troy non-stop. I want to show him the home at the area and we want to get all of our questions answered and get the inspection solidified so that we can then move towards closing. So moving alone is a lot of work and the fact that we're moving out of state is even more work so it's been crazy. I had to type up a list of all the things that we need to do to move and as you can see I've added more and more to the list as the week has went on. There's just a lot of people we have to notify a lot of things that we have to put into place. There's things we have to cancel and change and it's a lot not to mention closing on a home here and buying a house out of state and setting all of that up has been insane. We have spent hours upon hours on the phone. Luckily Troy's on vacation until his FMLA start so he's been able to really really help me so we can cohesively work together and run separate errands and make phone calls and really get double the things done which has been really really helpful. We're moving to sunny Arizona and we are so incredibly excited. There's still a lot to do but as the days get closer and closer we get more and more excited for our new adventure and we just know in our hearts that this is the best decision for us. We're going to live somewhere warm and really the best part of making this decision so when we close on our house not only are we able to put that huge down payment down on our house in Arizona we're also going to be paying off all of our debt so we'll be paying off our three car payments and our camper payment which equates to about $1,300 a month in payments that we won't have any longer from selling our house. We'll also be able to save money that will help with living expenses and medical until Troy is approved, fingers crossed for disability and until he's able to get medical insurance through Medicare we'll be able to have that money saved to help cover his wages and the medical expense so moving really was the most logical choice for us because by selling our house it puts us in a much better financial position and it also allows us to move somewhere sunny and warm and beautiful and close to the people that we love. And the other huge perk to moving to Arizona for me is I am now just about five and a half hours from my best friend in San Diego and you guys know I go see her a couple of times a year she comes here to see me. We are just excited to be within hours from each other instead of a flight from each other so that's just another huge benefit. So with the moving process I've been thinking about whether or not I want to vlog our road trip and our move to Arizona. Definitely let me know down in the comments if you'd like to see that if you want to see the process moving out of state what that looks like what we go through the trials and tribulations how I stay on track with my eating and my weight loss journey while traveling and while moving and closing and buying a house all at the same time. If you're interested in that definitely let me know down in the comments because I'd be happy to vlog that if it's something that you want to see. So that leads me to the last thing that I want to chat about and that is kind of the direction that my channel is going. My content leading up to moving is going to be remaining the same. The week that we end up moving most of my content will remain the same. There will not be a grocery haul or a meal prep that week because we'll be in the process of driving to Arizona and that may even carry over into the next week. There may be a couple of weeks that I don't have as many videos or my normal videos out for you but my plan is to get my office and my filming space set up as soon as possible so that I can get back to doing what I love and that's filming videos and sharing my journey with you interacting with you guys and building relationships that's really what I love. So my plan is to get my filming space and office set up as soon as possible once we get moved into our new house. My grocery hauls will most likely be changing as well moving forward. We need to try to eat up as much of the food that we have in our house because it's hard enough to move cold and frozen food in town more or less several states away so I'll be doing a lot of shop my pantry, shop my fridge, shop my freezer which I'm really excited to share with you guys on how you can basically budget grocery shop by seeing what you have on hand and using the food that you have already stopped up in your house. So my grocery hauls moving forward after yesterday will be a little bit different because I'll be doing a use it up challenge trying to use up a lot of what I want and then just buying the groceries that I need at the store to put those meals and those recipes together. So like I said I'm excited to share that with you guys. Once we get moved into our new house I plan to resume just regular scheduled programming here, regular videos. I would like to incorporate some more vlog style of videos whether that's in the form of a what I eat in a day or just a day in my life type of vlog because I want to share with you our new home state. I want to share with you the state of Arizona, the city we live in, the surrounding communities, it's absolutely beautiful and breathtaking there and I definitely want to share that with you. So let me know if you'd like to see vlogs or if you'd like to see more what I eat in a day that incorporates what I'm doing and the scenery and where I am out and about in the city. I'm also looking forward to the warmer weather and the community that we live in actually has a community pool which is great and I told Troy that we need to make friends with all our neighbors with pools because we did not want a pool because of our dogs and just the maintenance of it and it's hard for Troy as it is to maintain our yard here part of the reason we're selling more or less maintain a pool but most of our neighbors have pools. So I said we need to be friends with all of our neighbors, all of our neighbors in general, but first and foremost those people with a pool. Totally kidding but we will try to get to know our neighbors in our community and there is miles and miles of beautiful paved walking and biking paths in our community. So I'm excited to be able to walk outside year round. No more having to join a separate gym to walk on the treadmill like I do here. I'll be able to walk outside whenever I want. Even in the dead of heat of summer if you get out early enough in the morning or late enough at night you can still enjoy a nice walk outside and the scenery where we live and in the state of Arizona is just absolutely breathtaking. So I'm really excited for the activity piece of my journey to progress as well. I feel like this video is really really long but I wanted to give you the back history of why we made this decision, what we're doing moving forward and of course kind of what to expect here on my channel. I can't wait to hear your guys's thoughts down in the comments. Let me know what you think of our move to Arizona, what you would like to see future content wise for me and if you have any video ideas definitely let me know those as well. I'm always looking for your ideas. You're my friends, you're the ones that watch my videos so I definitely want your feedback on what type of content I can put out that would be of interest to you. So definitely leave all that down in the comments. Also if you have questions about our move and the process leave those as well. Maybe we could do a Q&A video. Just leave it all down in the comments for me. I always want to be honest and transparent and share with you what's happening and this is a big big step in my life and this is a big step in our lives. So of course I wanted to keep you posted and share that with you. So I hope you enjoyed today's video. If you did don't forget to give it a thumbs up. Subscribe if you're not because I'd love to have you here. There's lots of fun stuff coming your way. Ring your bell notification so that you're notified whenever new videos are posted and don't forget to check out the description box for everything I shared with you today. Nutrition coaching, links and discounts to my favorite things and don't forget follow me over on Instagram and join my Facebook group so you can keep up with me on my trip. I'll be posting quite regularly there more day to day things so definitely join us on Facebook and follow me over on Instagram. Thank you guys for watching and thank you for your love and your continued support and for helping me be able to support my husband for better, for worse, for sickness and in health. You supporting my channel and watching my videos really really helps me out and it seriously means the world to both Troy and I. So thank you again for watching and I'm excited to see you in my next video. Bye!