Hello all,

Five years ago I got whooping cough (aka as pertussis or "The Hundred Day Cough") as a healthy, annual-physical adult.

It was absolutely awful, I could not get through a single sentence without bursting into a paroxysm of barking and whooping, whistling coughs. At that time, it was relatively rare for an adult to contract pertussis, but now.....

..... whooping cough is back. There have been epidemics (classified by the CDC) in three states so far: WA, VT, and MN. (link to CDC: [www.cdc.gov]) There are three major factors influencing this:

1. The pertussis portion of the DTP vaccine loses efficacy as quickly as five years. (When I got the disease, it had been 35 years since I received my last DTP)
2. The anti-vaccination gang means that there is a very large group of children, especially in upper-class college towns, who are unvaccinated. In a healthy child, pertussis can look like bronchitis and misdiagnosed.
3. We are a mobile society, jetting all over, picking up all kind of microbes en route. 99.99% of them are benign, but it's that 1 in a 1000 we need to worry about.

So.... please, check your vaccination history and get a pertussis booster (Tdap) if you haven't had one in over a decade. Mine was $45 at Walgreens. If you are uninsured it's about $15 (or free) at a clinic.

ESPECIALLY if you are over 65 or are in contact with your grandchildren. I have never seen an infant die of pertussis or measles or diphtheria, but this used to happen not so long ago with awful frequency. Get the Tdap booster, and you can check it off your list in the New Year.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/04/2013 01:43PM by MissyH71.

This has gotten so bad that they now offer the vaccination in the hospital to a woman when she has a baby. Here in my state they also make you watch a horrible video about a baby with pertussis coughing and coughing.

I just think of how mobile we all are, going into malls and retail and restaurants as part of our job. All enclosed environments, and lots of kids everywhere. I have a healthy respect for pertussis now, having been through it. Wish I had known that the vaccine wears off so quickly, and that a booster is necessary.

The epidemic among adults threatens many children who are still too young to have been immunized. I listened recently to an interview with a woman who was misdiagnosed, had a baby and lost the child to whooping cough that was contracted from the mother! This was so sad, and the mother and family are now crusaders for adult awareness and immunization.

I got this 12 years ago, and it's what caused my horrific car accident in which my entire car blew up in a giant fireball right after I got out of it. My two Collies were still in it. I didn't know the coughing could/would get so bad I'd actually pass out. I didn't even know I had whooping cough until after this. Of course, it didn't happen until I was driving down the freeway @70mph.

I didn't even cough all the time ~ just sometimes. There were enough clear times that I thought it was just some left-over thing from a cold I'd had, which happens all the time with me. Sometimes the coughing would be enough to make me dizzy, and a couple of times that did happen while I was driving, and I pulled over. It had been seeming to get better, until that day I passed out and got in the accident. I wish I could go back to that day, and tell myself NOT to make that trip. One of the most horrible days in my life. It haunts me to this day.

Most current MDs in the US have never, knowingly, seen a case of whooping cough, so under diagnosis is rampant.

I "thought" I had it and went to Doc...have a respirtory infection and can't stop coughing. Nothing to do about it, they
don't thoughtlessly give you antibiotics, just wait it out (chicken soup helps). I think my Doc. would have know if it were
Whopping cough, I trust him...).