My story;
at 20/21 I was having trouble deciding what I wanted to do with my life. I had been taking university classes but was switching faculties every semester and finally just decided that until I knew what I wanted to do I was just wasting my time and money. I dropped out and decided I wanted to travel somewhere and do some voluntourism. I was looking looking looking on the web and finally found an animal sanctuary in rural Costa Rica. I went there for 3 months in winter 2011.
The animal sanctuary turned out to mostly be a sham run by this delusional Texan woman who cared more about her next high than the animals, and it was much more of a small zoo than it was a sanctuary. BUT I met Gerald in the first couple weeks of being in Costa Rica. He eventually moved into my hotel room with me and we were together every day until I had to go back to Canada. I was not very smart about money and ended up racking up a lot of debt while I was down there and so I had to work my ass off during our long distance relationship of 2 years to pay down all of the debt. I visited once, 6 months after I left. We applied for a TRV the following spring but were denied. I started planning the wedding in August 2012. Last May I travelled to Costa Rica with the intent to live there long term. We had a big wedding in June, and a honeymoon and then we went back to normal life. We found a place of our own to rent and I did my best to find a job but my savings dwindled slowly down and it became clear, very quickly, that living in Costa Rica just wasn't going to be viable.
August 2013 was when I first started the paperwork. Everything was ready to go by the end of September and we travelled to the capital to get Geralds medical done. Well on the chest X-ray, they "found something" and everything was put on hold. We continued having tests through private health care, which really blew through our money, and then finally we were able to get a referral to a specialist in the public health care system and the rest of the tests and appointments were free besides the travel that we had to pay for ourselves. It took until November for him to get back a diagnosis of Tuberculosis. He started treatment immediately. The immigration doctor advised us in December that because we went back to the public health system we needed to provide him with copies of every test done through that system, a letter detailing the diagnosis and referral to our local clinic for treatment, and also a letter from the local clinic detailing every tiny aspect of Geralds treatment. The doctor then finally submitted these documents with his report to CIC in February and included a note that once the treatment is completed we will redo a chest xray and the spewtum tests to prove that the tuberculosis is gone and send those results as an update. This is due to happen in May.
So after all of that i should add that I became pregnant also in November! and the healthcare in our rural community being what it was, and our finances being almost completely demolished, I returned to Canada after christmas. I work here now until the baby comes and then I will be able to go on MAT leave and return to Costa Rica with the baby. We sent our application at the end of March and I am hopeful that he will have his Visa in hand before my MAT leave is complete so that when I come back to Canada, I can bring him with me.
Right now I am 7 months pregnant and unfortunately Gerald will miss the birth and the first couple months of the babys' life but I am confident that if anything in our application was even remotely questionable we will have the baby and that will be the cincher on our application. I should add that we have some things against us like a 13 year age difference, Gerald doesn't speak any english, and where I have some university he has only his grade 5 (and it's pretty common for someone his age down there, most of the men in the community quit school at grade 5/6).
So that's me, we have been through a lot, I can only hope that we can finally start our regular life together in Canada by next summer sometime.
