What a week!

Some of you may already know about the drama of this week. My mom developed a suddenly spiking fever that went to 105 Monday afternoon. When my dad called the doctor, she recommended aspirin and the fever went down. That night, however, the fever returned, but again responded to aspirin. My parents went to a clinic to find out what was going on, and the doctor gave Mom an antibiotic shot, x-rayed for pneumonia, and prescribed more antibiotics.

Case closed? Far from it. Once again that afternoon Mom's fever shot up to 105. She became incoherent, pale, and unable to stand or walk. Dad decided to take her to the hospital, but when we couldn't get her into the car, he called 911. She was taken to Orange County Memorial Hospital, the doctors diagnosed blood poisoning. and the treatment began. Her first IV dosage of antibiotics brought the fever down somewhat, but she still had a fever, and the bacteria count in her blood remained high. At this point my dad, my sisters, my brother, and I emailed or called everyone we knew to ask for prayer. She had four churches, two prayer chains, and lots of friends praying.

Praying made all the difference. By Thursday afternoon Mom's blood was clear and the doctors had found no secondary infection. She returned home Friday afternoon. She's still tired and still has a cough, but the serious infection disappeared after everyone prayed.

During all this, Newport Mesa Church's Marketplace VBS was going on. My sister took charge of the paper making "shop" and I was "mother" to ten children in the tribe of Joseph. I'll post more pictures of the VBS when I have them. At the finale Friday night, Gabe announced that we'd had 175 children attending and 111 volunteers helping throughout the week. Quite the production. Because I've been a "mother" so many times - I don't even know how many - one of the coordinators asked if I could do the Shabbat and Havdalah rituals for a training video for new "mothers." On Thursday after VBS ended they rounded up several children to be in an impromptu tribe for the video.

Saturday I spent most of the morning and early afternoon in a CPR class. I had to renew as part of the credential requirements. It was after the class had ended that the instructor told me I didn't have to sit through the whole thing since I'm required to renew yearly. I could have come in and asked the instructor for the exit exam. If I'd passed the exam, that would have been enough to renew. Oh.

Saturday afternoon Joy and I went to the Orange County Fair. We first spent quite a long time in Home and Hobbies, looking for Joy's entries and admiring (or, I admit, sometimes laughing at) others' entries. There are some incredibly talented people in Orange County. We went to see my mom's paintings in Visual Arts next and then browsed the rest of the fair.







Fortunately for us, there was a taiko drum performance scheduled at one of the free stages, so we got to see that as well.









Sunday after church and after lunching with some people from my small group, I walked to the beach with my sister. As usual, there was plenty to see there. The beach was extremely crowded, and people were preparing for the US Surf Open. We walked a ways down the beach, and then returned to watch the Pier Plaza performers.