This last week or so has been sorta nuts.
Dave's classes are finishing up, so they're ramping up a bit. Instead of every other weekend, he's had class both of these last two weekends. He's been doing a lot of late night studying.
He's also got what the dr thinks is a pinched nerve in his lower back/leg. It's pretty sucky.
Last week we had some friends come to visit. Fun.
About four hours after they left we all got sorta sick and laid around for the rest of the weekend. We all stayed home from everything on Monday too. Well, me and the kids anyway. Tuesday morning it dawned on me that I'd recently been notified that one of the families in our co-op had kids diagnosed with Pertussis. I don't know about where you are - but here in Oregon it's become something of an epidemic. I wasn't too worried cause we've all had those shots, and we just had colds anyway.
But then I read about the symptoms (which were exactly ours) and decided to call the disease specialist from the Health department who had contacted us all, sorta just to reassure myself I had nothing to worry about. Buuuut, she seemed rather concerned. She calmed down a bit when she learned Joel was just over 1 year old. (I guess anyone under 12 months is at a greater risk when they contract it.)
And so I spoke with our pediatirican too, just in case. When the advice nurse called me back she totally had the "Oh, I'm sure it's fine..." voice until I described our exposure (closed room for five hours or so) and that they'd had lab confirmed cases and that we were now sick. And then she got rather serious.
She hung up, spoke to the dr, and called back saying all the kids were going on antibiotics immediately. This threw me a little cause we don't really like to do antibiotics and two of the kids weren't even sick at all. Is this really the best course of action? Shouldn't we at least get tested and see if we even have this before we go destroying all of our 'biotics'?
After several phone calls (and about 24 hours) I finally learned that the test is downright horrible and really it's best avoided. It involves a swab inserted in your nose, bent down to the back of your throat. Apparently legs and arms must be restrained. The nurse had had it once 15 years ago and swore she could still feel it. She said the only way she'd ever do it again was if someone was about to kill her dog and this would stop it.
Okay. Antibiotics for us.
Aaaand, we all got to stay home and go nowhwere for the rest of the week. Just in case we really did have germs, we weren't supposed to infect anyone else. I had to call Ellen's school (that was fun.) and tell them we were keeping her home for a week because she *might* have been secondarily exposed to pertussis. They weren't very excited about that.
So anyway, we've had a lovely few days here at home doing nothing. I'm only going slightly insane with the need to GET. OUT. NOW. It's actually mostly nice to have no deadline for anything. Want to take alllll day to get your school work done? Sure, whatever. We've got no where to be. Want to refuse to obey and be sent to your bed until you do? No problem. What? Don't want to obey after an hour? No problem. Get comfortable. Still not after two hours? No worries. I've got a book to read and nowhere to go.
I didn't think we really had it at all, but Joelbaby - who was coughing the worst - got immediately better with antibiotics. That doesn't happen with a cold. So shoot, maybe.
And we're all vaccinated. Apparently it's only 75-80% effective. Which is better than nothing. And I guess if you do get it, it's not nearly as bad as if you weren't vaccinated.
So that's been our fun this week. I have read lots of good books though. That's a plus.
