I survived and Pertussis!

Just a quick note to let you know I survived the exam! It was intense, but not as brutal as everyone makes it out to be. I even found myself thinking at one point (God forbid!) - "this is kind of fun!" Heh. The Deac says that's because I failed utterly and I've no doubt he's right. No, really, this exam is VERY HARD TO PASS. People much better at and more enamoured of physics than I take it several times before passing. In general, I found it to be good practice. I won't get the results until the week after Thanksgiving, so I'm putting it out of my head for now.

This week we also found out that the reason Emmelia has had a very bad cold for the past week is that we were exposed to an infant with an active whooping cough (pertussis) infection at a birthday part at the end of June. I've learned a lot about the pertussis vaccine and disease this week. Bottom line is that all of us except Maura are showing symptoms (she's been vaccinated more recently, so she hopefully won't get it) and are on antibiotics for it. Apparently the vaccine is only 59-90% effective anyway, and they are finding that it wears off in 2-5 years. So adults are rarely immune to it. Also, if you don't start treatment in the first 3 weeks of symptoms (BEFORE the tell-tale whoops begin), antibiotics do no good. We were never positively diagnosed, but our doctor thinks it's worth treating as pertussis anyway. I have to say it's weird to get a call from someone at a health department telling you you've been exposed to something.

It took me longer to recover from the exam than I thought, but I did manage to get this LO done today. I wanted to use my friend Amy's awesome new templates and also applied to be on another CT with this layout about the kids' tumbling class (credits are here). I didn't feel like it was my best work. Sometimes it's hard to get the creative juices flowing again when you've taken an extended break.

Tonight we're hanging out with friends enjoying delicious Thai food and playing a new game we've all fallen in love with - Munchkin! I can't wait!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!