Anita Roberts

Immediately after stepping out of the plane in which I had nearly frozen to death despite American Airlines providing me with 3 wonderfully thick blankets, I was enveloped in brilliant sunshine, and more importantly, warmth which penetrated all the way to my bones and brought my brain to life. I had not felt so comfortable and so alive in the past 2 months. Overall, the entire trip was the stuff of dreams. The tranquility of our villa Cini Kin Na (Mayan for “house where the sun sets on the water”) and the boundless love and strength of family bonds were truly restorative and healing. Each day there I grew stronger. There was continuous activity with various people snorkeling or scuba diving off our private 280’ shoreline or as the kids would invent crazy new games in the pool. The villa itself was spectacular and one with the outdoors – all doors and all rooms were open to the outdoors with the weather low humidity, continuous breezes with highs in the 80’s and lows around 70. The meals cooked by Miguel and Lorena were wonderful and always of sufficient quantity that we could eat the left-overs for lunch the next day (they provided breakfast and dinner with all of us sitting around one huge table). Staying in Cini Kin Na was so seductive that none of us ever ventured out to shopping – even though it was an easy walking distance away.

With all of Bob’s extensive planning, all went smoothly with the medical side and I got my TPN every night plus a few saline infusions to counter the dehydration. In 5 days I went from hardly being able to navigate the steps down and up from the sea to rather confidently doing our multiple trips to get my feet bathed in the turquoise blue water.

All in all, the physical comfort of finally being warm helped restore me mentally and I am slowly regaining strength in my legs. Life is again very much worth living and I find myself having an unfounded optimism about the future.