April 10, 2009
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Whooping Cough
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I banked this vid before Rex's birth, but I thought it mighty timely considering the health scare we just had with Rex. I was spoiled with Vivien. She didn't get ill till she was 11 months. But others in the family did, and thank GOD my baby missed this one.
About 4 years ago, my brother-in-law (then 16 years old) caught whooping cough at school, and there was a local outbreak of it. My husband and I happened to be between apartments and staying at their house for that week. My father-in-law is a physician, so he put us all on preventative antibiotics and thankfully no other family members were infected. But it was so awful to see BIL so sick, and so stressful thinking we could be sick. I didn't even have a kid back then. You are so right–this is an OLD disease that should have been eradicated long ago. Stubborn, misinformed people wreck it for everyone else.
Thanks for posting this. This is very important for folks to understand. Pertussis is not just a childhood disease, but as your doctor mentioned, on the rise for adolescents and adults. If one has the opportunity to get the tetanus-diptheria-acellular pertussis vaccine (Tdap) in place of one traditional tetanus booster (Td) vaccine, that would be ideal to protect everyone. The effect of the childhood vaccine series with diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccine starts waning about 5 to 10 years after the completion of the series. Read more about it at: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/pertussis/default.htm#vacc.
So glad your son is home now–it really is the best place to be, isn't it? The healing place. Sorry you had the scare–you and your husband did great. Your writing was very clear and descriptive and I'm sure will be of help to others. Hope you all get some sleep now!
Interestingly enough, I have a friend who was doing research to decide whether or not they wanted to immunize their baby and while they were trying to "figure it out" their 8 month old daughter got whooping cough. If only they had figured it out earlier and just bit the bullet.
Carrie, is there daughter okay?
PB- thank you for saying my writing is clear. sometimes it doesn't come out as clear as I want it too.