Shalom from Israel, everyone! Well, after nearly three wonderful years here, the crap has hit the fan in the life of DH and me. In short, after months of going through endless series of tests and examinations and physical therapy, DH was refused to be prescribed medical marijuana by the Israeli Health Ministry, despite being fully supported for it by his family doctor, a pain clinic, and three specialists. As he has Crohn's disease, he is unable to tolerate any kind of NSAID, painkiller, or other anti-inflamatory medication. Appeals to the board are not possible, and the decision is final. In other words, he's SOL. We don't understand why he was refused, but there seems to be no recourse at this point.
As such, barring some kind of a miracle turnaround (this being Israel, we won't entirely rule that out), we will be shortly moving back to America to Washington state, which has my (aging) family members living there, as well as legal marijuana. He will be able to be pain-free and be able to work full time--neither of which he is able to do now. My heart is breaking, but if we're going to be moving back, we're going to be going where he can get legal treatment and where we can be near my family.
So here's what I need: advice on choosing an AFFORDABLE community somewhere along the I-5 corridor, between North Seattle and up to, but not including, Bellingham, Washington. (Bellingham rents are already too pricey, it's too far away from Seattle, and doesn't offer enough work--my mother lives there and we've already checked it out thoroughly.) We will be bringing our telecommuting jobs with us from Israel, which will be enough to support us for awhile, but looking down the road, we need to be prepared to find physically-based work (i.e. office jobs) if necessary. So, isolated, rural communities too far (i.e. more than a 20 minute highway drive) from an employment hub (e.g. Everett) are out. Ideally, we'd also like to be in a town that either has, or is not too far from, a synagogue. When we lived in rural Nevada, we had to commute 75 miles one way to go to shul, and that's just not acceptable anymore. We want to be able to be involved in our temple's community life on a regular basis, so they need to be only a town or two away.
We will probably rent a very temporary, month-to-month place at first, so we have somewhere to land with our two Israeli cats (!), then search for a longer-term rental. We're hoping to be able to rent a 3 bed, 2 bath house, at around $1,000 USD a month or less.
We are very fixed on being in this geographical area, as I have my stepmother in north Seattle, and my mother and stepfather in Bellingham. They are all getting older and do not feel comfortable driving in Seattle traffic into the center of the city, much less further south. We very much want to be close to them and make it easy for everyone to visit each other--not just us always doing the driving.
I was born in Seattle, Washington, but have never lived there since I left it at age three. My experience of the area I am talking about is really limited to just driving back and forth between Bellingham and north Seattle, never really stopping except for gas or meals. So my impressions consist of: Airport, Space Needle, U District, Shoreline, Burger King, senior citizen home, Everett, bridge, flat, tulips, casino, outlet mall, nice rest stop where they sometimes give you free coffee, mountains, twisty roads, Bellingham., Canadian border, IKEA." That's it!
Any advice or suggestions you can give would be very much appreciated. I know we have a LOT of Washingtonians in this group, and even though it breaks my heart to be leaving Israel, there are far worse places we could be ending up than in beautiful Washington!
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