Double Ug.

Sarah has pertussis (whooping cough), so we are instructed to avoid public places for 5 full days until she is no longer contagious.

Our county has a massive outbreak of pertussis this year. There are more cases of pertussis this year than has been reported since the 1960's, so this bug is getting around. Our doctor told us this morning that out of all the cases of pertussis in the US this year, a whopping %10 of them are occurring in our county. The CDC doesn't know why this is happening, so they are taking extra samples from patients for further testing. Sarah has been completely vaccinated, but still caught it. We are being interveiwed by the Health Department so they can try to figure out what correlating facts there are between our case and others. No fun.

The next step they advise is for our entire family to take antibiotics since the disease is so contagious. Ug.

On the bright side, it does make me so thankful for the access we have to modern medicine and health care. I'm SO thankful we have a warm home and beds to rest in, and plenty of home school material so we don't turn into brain nush. Sarah will have missed 2 weeks of school before she's back, so hopefully I can keep her on par with the class work.