Hau’oli makahiki hou!

Ahhhh! Bliss! A remote beach outpost on Kaua'i to start the New Year!

Ahhhh! Bliss! A remote beach outpost on Kaua'i to start the New Year!

UPDATE: Album pictures posted through photo above. Narrative updated below.

We were looking for quiet, solitude, and adventure, and found it all on Kaua’i. We spent the holiday with mom and Richard in a cottage at Barking Sands (Pacific Missile Range). Such a beautiful place, and sparsely populated compared to O’ahu. Doug and Mary wrapped up their vacation in Maui and really enjoyed adventuring around the north shore on a winding, cliff-hugging road, horseback riding, and surfing. Can’t wait to see their pictures, too! I hope you all had a wonderful start to 2010 and know that we are thinking of you and love each of you.

We closed out 2009 with Dave working about 6 weeks straight and all of us, except for me, coughing for weeks. We all went to Kaua’i, coughing, and stayed, ironically, on Barking Sands, with everyone barking and braying like the donkeys mysteriously tied up to the side of the road, grazing peacefully. Upon our return I vowed to revisit this illness with renewed vigor as the only well person capable of researching and synthesizing all the symptoms into a coherent narrative (since I’d slept in the same room with the boys for three days, I had some good data!). Despite our good humor and finding ways to laugh about this, something needed to be done. Poor mom was the first one sick, and seemed to be suffering the most. The point here is this: it appears that mom contracted pertussis (whooping cough), and the kids became infected due to close contact. They seem to have a relatively milder illness, but I say that with some equivocation because I don’t consider violent coughing and whooping, sometimes with vomit at the end, to be a mild illness. Thankfully they’re robust kids and the vaccine seemed to provide partial immunity. Dave has been pretty sick, too, and trying to cook holiday meals with sterile technique to protect Doug and Mary (who are thankfully not sick…yet!). If you haven’t had your Tdap booster…ask your doc about it. I had mine over the summer and was immune to this. I am so grateful. I tried to catch it but couldn’t. I will wrap up this post as Ben is coughing and whooping right on schedule – about two hours after going to bed. Hopefully he’ll have a good night like last night since he’s been on antibiotics for about 24 hours. Everyone is on meds now (except for Richard who saw a particularly recalcitrant ER doc who doesn’t feel it’s worthwhile to stave off further transmission by prescribing the appropriate antibiotic) and appears to be on the mend. I’m thankful for a great pediatrician, and hopefully a better start to 2010! All the best to you and yours…aloha!

3 Comments

  1. Gramma Oli 4 January, 2010

    What a wonderful place you picked! All we could hear was the rhythm of the pounding waves just beyond the deck. Heavenly! And Barking Sands was an apt name for most of us who have an unusual, and matching “barking” cough, which made us all laugh . . . if we weren’t the one “barking.” What a great trip it was!

  2. Anonymous 6 January, 2010

    Those pictures were awesome. My new dream…an anniversary trip to Kaua’i just Chad and me just hiking and resting!! It’s cold here and your vacation really made me miss Hawaii. It would be better if we had snow…instead just bitter cold and it’s not pretty.

  3. Leslie 6 January, 2010

    Those pictures were awesome. My new dream…an anniversary trip to Kaua’i just Chad and me just hiking and resting!! It’s cold here and your vacation really made me miss Hawaii. It would be better if we had snow…instead just bitter cold and it’s not pretty.

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