Whoop, whoop.
In the first week of December, Steve came home with a terrible cough that was making the rounds of his firm. It was a hacking cough, but no other symptoms. No fever or mucus. He didn't miss any work or anything. He wouldn't have even gone to the doctor's except that he already had a physical scheduled.
He told the doctor about the cough. The doc listened to his chest and said it was probably a virus that was turning into bronchitis. He gave Steve a prescription for antibiotics.
The cough persisted. Steve called the doctor, who renewed the prescription. A few days later, Ian started coughing. I held him home from school for a couple of days, but sent him in for the half day before Christmas. After all, Steve's doctor thought it was no big deal.
They both kept coughing. Right through Christmas with all the parties, through the in-laws' five day stay at our home, the twenty guest Christmas Eve party, the post-Christmas parties. We socialized a lot during those couple of weeks.
Last weekend, Steve started doing a little googling. He wanted to know why he was still coughing after six weeks, and why Ian was coughing so hard that his little face turned red and he struggled for air. Steve ended up on a wikipedia page for whooping cough. He called me over to look at the page and we looked at each other. Could it be? No. Couldn't be. Weren't there vaccinations for that? There wasn't a whoop sound, really. Just the gasping for breath.
I sent Ian to school the next day, but scheduled a doctor's appointment for that afternoon. I told the doctor the symptoms. The doctor looked at me. Could it be? No. Couldn't be. He was vaccinated. Let's check, just in case.
The doctor walked out of the room and swiftly returned with equipment. Restrain him, he said. And before we were aware of what was going to happen next, he shoved a six inch Q-tip up Ian's nose and wiggled it around. Ian was understandably pissed off. He called the doctor "you twit" — no idea where he got that word, but I suppose it was better than "you asshole."
On Thursday, I came back home after spending the morning at the supermarket and the gym to find my answering machine blinking furiously. Messages from the doctor's office and the health department. He had whooping cough alright.
Everybody was in panic mode. I had to pick up Ian from school immediately even though he wasn't contagious anymore. His school nurse was ready to have a cow. The health department made me identify all the people that we saw in the past month. Everyone, including the non-sick ones, had to go on antibiotics in case we were carriers of the disease.
Then I had to call all those people we had seen over Christmas to let them know that we had been spreaders of disease. That's always a tricky proposition. Do you apologize? Some people get mad at you when you tell them that you inadvertently exposed them and their children to a disease.
We were dis-invited to two parties on Saturday, and spent most of the weekend quarantined.
When the panic subsided, we reflected on the many medieval diseases that we've been inflicted with in the past decade. Shingles, gout, Fifth disease, and now whooping cough. Next week, we plan on getting scurvy.
The public health officer who quizzed me for thirty minutes on the origins of this particular outbreak was surprised that my husband brought it home from work. Steve said that the entire floor of his office had been coughing like this for weeks. It is somewhat amusing that vast numbers of Wall Street employees have whooping cough, but don't know it. It's like biblical retribution or something.
Apt. 11d 
Last year a friend had whooping cough — she got it from her 8 year-old niece. I was out of town, so she quarantined herself at my place..
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Hope everybody feels better or doesn’t get sick. It sounds like you’d rather have that than shingles at least.
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Is whooping cough an old-fashioned disease? I’d never thought of that, though I guess it might be. (I had shingles as a little kid, on my back. Terrible, in part because it’s normally something old people get. More terrible because of the pain, though.) Here I’m more worried about a doctor who would say that something was a virus and then give antibiotics. I know many do, mostly just to get rid of people they don’t want bothering them, but giving antibiotics for something they can’t possibly help (i.e., viruses) as dangerous, wasteful, and dumb, and I wish doctors would stop it. (And, that people would stop asking for/demanding them.)
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I’m pretty sure I had whooping cough as a child, although it was never IDed as such. It involved a lot of dramatic gasping and lying on the floor coughing until the ribs ached. Quite unmistakable. I’m sure I was properly vaccinated, too.
We had a TB scare earlier this year (a relative was diagnosed and is on a multi-month treatment program) and had to self-quarantine from playdates and such until the kids and I tested clear. That could have been a lot worse.
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Whooping cough felled the campus here my first or second year of teaching. Class was like trying to lecture to an orchestra mid-symphony.
Did the doctor(s) say anything about the vaccinations — like, answering the obvious question of “WTF?”?
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Has there been any reaction at work? Don’t those folks have their own stories of run-ins with public health?
I hope you’re feeling better soon. We’ve been exposed to lots of stuff over the years, and I always assume the folks who exposed us feel worse than I do. Does anyone expect to make it through December without getting sick?
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Does anyone expect to make it through December without getting sick?
I thought we were going to make it, but we spent the afternoon of New Years Eve getting treatment for an ear infection.
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I caught pertussis while I was in Zimbabwe in 1998. Pretty much incapacitated me for a month: I didn’t sleep at all for one week.
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You and your dh would go straight to the CDC in the future for concerns. Much more authoritative than Wikipedia or any other heath source on the web. Also, it seems weird to me that doctors don’t do this themselves. It’s a good repository for info on infectious diseases, because they would see that it’s not exactly a weird thing for whooping cough to break out among teens or adults. That’s why there is now a new tetanus booster that includes a booster for pertussis, and that this is recommended for teens and adults.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5517a1.htm
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What is weird is that your child got vaccinated and then got it, but that just goes to show that vaccines are not 100% effective, and that if herd immunity fails at the population level a few kids can be get sick. Get well soon!!
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We just had a similar experience in October/November. Took my son in for a persistent cough (having flown with him to a different state to attend a wedding couple of weeks earlier) after a bout of what we thought was H1N1 flu. After the q-tip procedure (which he *screamed* through), he tested positive for pertussis. He was the only one in the family with symptoms, but the health dept & our pediatrician strongly recommended everyone in the family take precautionary antibiotics. Had to pull son out of daycare for several days until he was officially non-contagious. The daycare director had to notify all the parents with a letter from the health dept. We live in MN & the very nice health dept worker who called us said pertussis has been on the increase in the past few years. My son was vaccinated, but apparently it’s only about 85% effective. Many sympathies!
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Herd immunity’s been diminishing lately with lessened vaccination rates. Sorry you got the fallout.
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biblical retribution indeed. wow.
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This was such a horrible story and yet it made me laugh. And also reminded me of the time my four year old had mono at Christmas (all the relatives ran for the hills; thanks guys!)and of the lice epidemic of 2006.
My sympathies to all of you.
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Oh, yeah, lice. My kid has waist length hair; lice = absolute hell. I ended up bribing her with gifts every single day in order to comb her hair.
And, at first, I didn’t believe the teacher. She had to bag a pulled hair for me to take in and look under a microscope before I’d believe her.
But, at least, with lice, you know that nothing really bad can happen. Respiratory illness are scary.
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This fall we had lice, pink-eye, swine, and strep all in the first quarter. And the wondered why I gave fewer grades to my classes!?
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