Birthday Girl

Sarah turned 9 this week!

So now we have 19, 18, 16, 15, 13, 12, 9, 7, and 5!

My parents bought her a rock kit. She is digging out rocks from, probably, plaster. She loves it!

Happy birthday, darling Sarah!

Dodgy Math about Vaccines

Ok, I might tread on some toes here but it is my blog :-).

So one of the things that many large, homeschooling families are "known for" is being anti-vaccination.  I think that isn't too surprising. We're already a group that is swimming against the tide of public normalcy. We're having way more than the usual 2.1 kids (or whatever it is -- birth rates keep falling.)

We've opted out of the public school system, which is a bizarre and weird decision.  I grew up mostly attending public schools and even though I was miserable off and on through many of my ps years, it was normal.  It wasn't until Kevin and I were married that I thought seriously about homeschooling and by the time Naomi was growing in my womb, we were set on this oddball academic path in life.  (I have never regretted it.)

Many of my homeschooling friends home birth, also weird.  Homeschoolers are often considered "crunchy" -- more into essential oils and great eating than pharmaceuticals.

Some of the vaccines were originally developed using aborted fetal cells.  That one is pretty rough for me as I am ardently pro life.  (If anyone cares, I can provide my reasoning for why we still vaccinate in spite of this issue.)

I respect my Christians brothers and sisters who are opposed to vaccination.  We are not. Our kids are fully vaxed except for  Gardisil, which is for the sexually transmitted disease HPV.

I am in agreement that vaccinations should not be forced by the government.  It's a tricky issue because I believe vaccination does save lives, BUT once the government forces its citizens to have things injected into them, it can keep doing things "for the greater good" which cross the line of personal freedom.

Ok, this is what I want to talk about today. As I said, I respect my friends who have chosen not to vaccinate.  The medical establishment has been and is wrong about some things.  I think diabetes is treated very poorly, and many meds are pushed on people when perhaps some other lifestyle change would be more efficacious.

Vaccination has been remarkably successful based on my reading and understanding. Smallpox eradicated, polio nearly so, same for measles and mumps and rubella when vaccination rates are high in a population.

The thing is, the anti-vax crowd sometimes does the most horrific things with data and that is what I want to talk about today.

I got something nutty in my FB feed yesterday.  It said:

/////////////////////////////

You Are 4.7 times More Likely to Get Whooping Cough If You are Vaccinated

CDC Statistics for Whooping Cough
2013-2018

Vaccinated - 12,772
Unvaccinated - 2717

/////////////////////////////

I would like to say this is a joke but it is not. The woman who posted it clearly believed that this data proves that getting the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccination increased your risk of getting pertussis by 4.7 times.

Ok, I think, I hope, it is obvious that this is GARBAGE but I am going to spell it out.

You cannot, cannot, cannot directly compare the number of whooping cough cases.  You must account for the populations of each group!!!!!!!

Here is an alternate example to prove my point.

Suppose that 10 people are not vaccinated for measles and 5 people get measles.

Suppose that 10,000 people ARE vaccinated for measles and 50 people get measles.

According to the dodgy, absurd, ridiculous math shown above, getting the vaccination increases your risk of getting measles by a factor of 10.

Because vaxed group: 50 cases.
Unvaxed group: 5 cases.

BUT BUT BUT there were a very small number who were not vaxed.  In my (made up) example, a full 50% of the unvaxed people got measles when only 0.5% of the vaxed people got measles.  The data supports the measles vaccine helping people not get measles.

You MUST know how many people are in each population to determine whether a vaccination is helpful!

I wish this was a singular example but it is not. I've done research on anti vax sites and this kind of math absurdity is incredibly common.  Frankly, they are either being openly deceptive (which I think is more likely to prove their own point) or they are terrible at math.  And if the latter, they have no business messing with numbers to throw at an unsuspecting public.

I am not artistic at all so I have no beef with those who struggle with numbers. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.  But don't, please don't, publish horrible data like this to prove your point. If vaccination is truly bad, the data ought to be out there in some reasonable form.

I've seen horrible graphs messing with x and y axes, I've seen other stuff that makes me foam at the mouth.  Let's be honest about the data, please!  Don't try to trick people into believing your anti-vax stance by dividing random numbers by random numbers and claiming absurdities by what is shown above.

Please.

Ok, rant over.

Diabetes

I am a  Type 2 diabetic.  I was diagnosed 15+ years ago during Joseph's pregnancy and I never got normal afterwards, so yes, I've been diabetic for a long time.  It's a pain.

But.

But...

I have thought many times that Joseph's pregnancy may have saved my life and/or limbs and/or kidneys and/or sight.

He is our 4th child.  Kids #1 and #2 were girls.  Isaac, Kid #3, obviously a boy.  At least one person said to us after he was born, "Well, you have your boy."

And Kevin's response to that was, "Well, we have A boy."

We weren't done.  (Obviously.)

So yes, at age 34 I was pregnant with another little guy and they did that glucose tolerance test and I failed and I was diabetic.

I have always been tall and thin. Yes, I have a fierce genetic predisposition for diabetes (lots of people in my maternal line) but the fact that I didn't LOOK diabetic and I was still in my 30's means that I doubt anyone would have checked me for a problem in a very long time.

Diabetes is a progressive disease.  It can take many years, even decades, for the damage of consistent high blood sugar to mess up eyes and limbs and kidneys.

If I was now 50 and had had uncontrolled blood sugars for 15 years, only to find out NOW that I am diabetic, I could be quite the mess.

Of course, maybe it would have been discovered some other way. But then again, maybe not.  I'm reading a great book called Blood Sugar 101, and the author claims that fasting blood sugar is often the last one to get bad. So even if I had been checked for fasting bg, the medical establishment might not have caught it.

So I am thankful for Kid #4, Boy #2!

Of course.

I'm thankful for all of them. They are all gifts from Heaven.

Regarding diabetes, I will freely admit I've gotten a bit lazy in the last year.  I'm working on being more careful about what I eat.  I'm working on exercising more.  My last A1c was 6.1 and I really would like to see it in the high 5's.  Most docs are perfectly happy with 6.1.  My doc is.  But I know from my reading that even that is high enough to potentially cause damage and I was SO young when I was diagnosed.  I have a lot more living, I hope.

I've been exceptionally busy with sick kids (they are mostly better now, and we've beaten back pink eye) and yesterday I ate a bunch of really bad stuff because I was hungry and there were left over white potatoes.

You might not think white potatoes would be bad but yeah, they are.  Like little carbohydrate bombs.

2+ hours after eating them, my blood sugar was 192. Ouch.  Usually I'm below 120 by that point and I haven't been that high in a year or so.

At least.

No more glumps of white potato, Laraba!

In the midst of annoyance with this long term disease, I am so thankful for blood sugar meters and metformin and enough money to buy what I need so I can eat low carb.

So yes, in many ways, I feel gratitude.  I can manage my diabetes because I know about my diabetes.  Praise God for that.

Pink Eye and Plushies

Sarah got pink eye and then it showed up in 7 more people. Yes, 8 Kendigs have pink eye.  My days are filled with eye drops in infected eyes.

Thankful for meds!

Yesterday I decided to do a massive cleaning bedding just in case pink eye germs were lurking.  I'm thankful for a big washing machine and dryer!

This was the laundry pile in our laundry room.  The pic doesn't do it justice. There were truly a LOT of blankets and sheets.

Then I decided that I should run all the plushies and stuffed animals through the dryer to kill any germs.

We have enough plush toys to fill a small country. Wow.

I mean, it is CRAZY.

So after tons of drying, I took all the plush toys downstairs and told the kids they could "only" have 10 plushies in their rooms. Each.

So Lydia, Miriam, and Angela have 30 plush toys which is way down from what they had before.  It is crazy.

The older boys are not plushie addicts, though Daniel is.

I'm still in awe at how many plushies were stuck behind beds and under beds and in beds and mixed in blankets. Wow.

In addition to pink eye, we've had a continuing irritating cold with rasping, icky coughs for Sarah and Daniel. I took Sarah in last week (when we identified pink eye) and her lungs are clear, it is just throat irritation.

A few minutes ago, Daniel drove his pedal car to the end of the driveway with me to fetch the mail. By the time we were back at the house, he was hacking away uncontrollably.  So they still can't be active because it sparks a bad coughing fit.

The little ones are SO impressed with my insistence that they avoid running around!

Oh well, this too shall pass.

We have too many plushies.

Happy 50th Birthday to Me!

Colder weather, cleaning, decluttering, and life

The kids really enjoy playing with magnets!

Lydia made this costume. She is a remarkable seamstress.  She did NOT get that from me.

Butterfly on Kevin's finger

It got cold enough to legitimately close the pool. Kevin gathered the troops and got to work. It is closed now for the season. We had such a great year of swimming but I am thankful to have a break from working on it.  It takes many chemicals and a fair amount of tender, loving care to keep it pristine. Or even close to pristine.

Our sun room often degenerates into a total disaster.  The kids do art in there and often leave it super messy. I cleaned it this week. It still looks pretty good, 3 days later.

I'm also in the midst of a moderately subdued decluttering frenzy.  I've been going through clothing and working on getting rid of stuff we don't need.  It is always exhausting work and I'm not someone who gets attached to things very easily.   And of course some people in this family are mightily attached to some things.  Not that that is bad -- everyone is different.  There is a place of balance where we enjoy what we have but we don't cling to everything.

I felt peaceful at the cabin last week when we just had a couple of small suitcases.  It was simple not having piles of stuff. So part of me wants to throw away half our belongings but hello, I'm only 1 of 11 people so I can't just toss things wholesale :-).

But I can comb through clothes that Daniel and Rose have outgrown, and give them away. I can go through the pantry and organize it so that we know what we have and don't buy more of what we don't need.  I can look at my books and get rid of some of them.

Really, I do get rid of books sometimes :-).

Brief Getaway

Kevin and I snuck away for a short trip earlier this week. We left Sunday, October 6th and got back the 8th.

We drove all of an hour away to a nearby Ohio State Park, where we rented a cabin for 2 nights.  It was a simple cabin but very comfy.  It had a kitchen, including a coffee maker that only sort of worked.  We spent 20 minutes the second day struggling and finally succeeding in making coffee with it, though we had to boil the water on the stove and pour it into the makeshift filter.

We were really roughing it.

We didn't do anything particular during these 2 days. We went for walks. We slept a lot. We played with the VR headset. Kevin cooked.  I washed dishes by hand.

It was really good for us to get away.  My brain was so relaxed in an environment where there was little I had to do. At home, there are always 50 things I COULD be doing.  Ok, maybe that is an exaggeration. But then again, maybe it isn't.

The rest of the week was insanely busy.  I was running kids to and from orthodontist and eye doctor appointments and various things of that ilk.  Oh, I got my new compliant driver's license. That was a major accomplishment.

Next week life is settling back into more normalcy.  I hope.