Look We Made the News!

Swine flu cases confirmed in UK
Nicola Sturgeon says the pair are recovering in a hospital in Airdrie

Two people admitted to a Scottish hospital after returning from a holiday in Mexico have been confirmed as the UK's first swine flu cases. Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said both individuals were recovering well in a Lanarkshire hospital from mild cases of the virus. It comes after Health Secretary Alan Johnson told the Commons 25 possible cases had been reported in the UK. Nine of those have proved negative, while 14 are still being investigated. Those 14 individuals were well enough to be managed in the community, Mr Johnson told MPs. The pair receiving treatment in Scotland are from Polmont, Falkirk.

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Mexico suspected flu toll soars
Q&A: Swine flu
He added: "If a new pandemic does start as a result of this outbreak in Mexico and the United States, we can't make it go away, but what we can do through our plans, particularly our stockpiles of anti-virals, is mitigate its effect." Foreign Secretary David Miliband said it was "right that we put the issue of swine fever on the foreign ministers' agenda" because there needed to be "maximum European co-ordination" on the issue.
Agency procedures
The Health Protection Agency (HPA) has a procedure for confirming whether or not a patient has swine flu. If a patient rings their GP or NHS Direct to report symptoms, they will be told to stay at home, not to visit a surgery or hospital. The HPA has prepared an "algorithm" - in essence, a flow chart - for suspected cases. On the phone, or possibly even face to face depending on the circumstances, the patient's GP or NHS Direct will take the patient through the algorithm. If the answers to the algorithm lead the questioner to believe the patient may have swine flu, a sample will be taken that will then be sent to one of the HPA's network of regional labs for testing. WE WERE NOT ASKED ANY QUESTIONS...ONLY ARE YOU FROM THE US?
If the sample is confirmed as influenza type A, it will then be sent to the HPA's Reference Lab at the Centre for Infections in Colindale, where they will carry out genetic typing on it and establish whether it is a confirmed case of swine flu.
There have also been cases of swine flu reported in Canada and a suspected case in France.

But I Just Wanted To See A Doctor!

Poor Levi has been sick for the past 9 days. It started out as a high fever (which he is very prone to get), but just seemed like a cold. He was eating fine, and the temp went down after 2 days. He seemed great, except for a cough. When we arrived here in England, Isaac started getting a runny nose and cough, but no temp. Again, he was overall acting normal, just a cold. Well 2 days ago, my mom and I came down with it as well. We had a really high temps., very sore throats, and bad coughing. Rachel woke up this morning saying her throat hurt as well. I finally decided to see if we could get in to see a doctor, since we leave Thursday for Uganda. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't turning into a nasty infection. My mom called her doctor, and they asked where we were from and that they would send someone out. Wow! I thought, how nice is that the doctor makes house calls! So much better then getting all three kids in the car to take them to the doctors. The doctor called on his way, and said that he would be wearing a mask, so tell the kids so they are not scared when he comes in.

About an hour later he arrived, comes in not only a mask, but a whole protective outfit. Had a plastic apron type thing, a mask, and of course gloves.


It finally clicks that he thinks we might have the swine flu.


He explained that since we were from America and there has been a breakout of the swine flu that he had to call Britain's form of the CDC, and they wanted to him to get samples from us. So he does a quick examination of us, says that he thinks we all just have a bad cold, but other than that we seem good. Then proceeds to pull out long Q-tips to take cultures, which Rachel sees and proceeds to freak out. I mean throws a HUGE fit. She is crying uncontrollably and hides behind a chair. She really doesn't like getting her throat swabbed. : ) I ask him if this is really necessary. He says if it were up to him, he wouldn't do it, b/c he's pretty sure we don't have it, but that since we are leaving we need to get it done. So we line up and get both our throats and noses swabbed. Never had my nosed swabbed before and I really hope I don't ever have to again.

Not quite the doctor visit I was planning on!

Sheep Farm

It's Lambing season right now in Northern England. It is quite amazing to see how many lambs there are. My parents had looked into different things to do with the kids while they were here, and my dad found that you can stay overnight at a sheep farm. So we packed our overnight bags and headed south. The drive was beautiful! Green everywhere. We got to our sheep farm bed and breakfast just before dinner, so we dropped our bags off, and then headed to the nearest pub to get some dinner. When we got back, my parents talked with the woman who owns the farm. They found out that their cow had kicked her husband just last week in the leg. (owwww!) He's okay but can't get out of bed, and she was running everything herself. They asked if we would be able to see any sheep real close up or even be able to pet them, she said we would just have to walk along the fences to see if we could see any close up, but she would have to catch one for us in order to pet it. & since it was just her, she really didn't have the time. So although the sheep farm turned out much different then we were anticipating, it was still neat. We were hoping for more of a tour or at least more info, and normally you might get that, but for obvious reasons it just wasn't going to happen.

This is where we stayed. It was built in the 1600's!

So we started walking around, and found many, many, many sheep. We even found one that was probably on 1-2 days old. Rachel & Isaac were so excited.



From there we drove closer to the coast, but we had to go over the "mountains". The road was crazy, it was only big enough for one car, and it wound and wound itself up this pass. Again beautiful views.


When we got to the town we got to go on a train ride. It was so fun. It was a small train, that you ride 40 minutes each way up into the fells (hills). Again the kids were beside themselves. After that we headed back home. This time on the main highway, so we didn't have to go on the crazy rode again.




My parents have been wonderful. I have come down with what i think (hoping) is just a cold. So I've just been laid up the last 2 days. My parents have been entertaining the 3 kids, which is exhausting. Levi & Isaac both have a little cold too. Please pray that we can all start feeling better soon. I hate missing out on my time here with my parents.

Jesse is still doing good. He has started house & car shopping. It looks like housing is a little more then we thought. But it looks like there are some options. I can't wait to go and see for myself. Other than that he is just getting to know a lot of different people there. Which he has informed me are awesome. Thanks for your prayers! love you all!

We Are Here & There

Jesse is in Uganda. Myself and the kids are in Carlisle, England. It's hard to be apart. Got an email from Jesse, i'll post some of it for you....

"So, I'm staring out the window at Kololo Hill, which overlooks the city. It is lush, it is green, and it is not nearly as dirty or loud as I would have expected it to be. Overall, I have to say that Kampala is a cleaner, quieter and more scenic city than Nairobi or Addis, which has been a pleasant surprise.

I just finished my first day of work at the office. I would have written earlier, but my Internet connection was down at the office (and actually the power was out for a good bit of the afternoon), which was not a pleasant surprise. ... The food was good, but it is pretty bland (we probably should have packed some redhot sauce to keep our tastebuds awake).

...I slept on all of the flights between Heathrow and here, and even in some of the airports, but I don't think I slept for any stretch over 90 minutes throughout. I'm dragging tail."

I also got to talk with him on the phone last night. The connection was pretty good! He is tired, and feeling a little sick, but is really excited about working with the people there. We are having a great time here with my parents, but it is weird thinking that he is there experiencing Uganda without us. He even went to a movie last night, and is going bowling tonight.

We've been taking it pretty easy here. Yesterday we went to Hadrian's Wall.

Today we are leaving to go stay overnight at a sheep farm. The kids are so excited. Isaac keeps shouting "baa, baa". Levi is still battling a pretty bad cold. He's not sleeping well and coughing quite a bit, and yet still smiles all day long, what a trooper! Rachel is loving playing school with her Oma, and has entertained us with singing Christmas songs over and over again.

It still hasn't hit me that we have actually moved from Virginia. It just feels like we are on vacation, and will be back soon. I'm waiting for the day when it really does. (poor jesse, when it does)

And We're Off

Our flight leaves tonight! Can you believe it? I know I can't! Where did the time go?

We've been out of our town home since Monday, staying with my sister & brother-in-law. We are almost completely packed.

We've started saying our goodbyes, which is always really surreal for me. But as we get closer to when we are actually leaving the harder it gets! Our flight leaves at 10 tonight...hopefully the kids will sleep the whole flight (i know wishful thinking). We will arrive in London Monday morning, then Jesse has about a 6 hour lay-over, and then he is on to Uganda. The kids and I are getting to stay with my parents up in Carlisle, England for 10 days before we head on down to Uganda.

I'll update more once we are in England, but just wanted to write once more before leaving. Thank you for all your prayers, we really appreciate them!