by Cheri Rae
The last big outbreak of whooping cough, five years ago, hit hard around here.
The nightmarish coughing spasms—so severe they left my then-eight-year-old son gasping for air around the clock, and both of us sleepless at night—were a grim reality for a couple of months, but the damage lingered far beyond.
Shocked by the severity of the vaccine-preventable illness, I learned everything I could and shared that new-found expertise in a memorable cover story for the Santa Barbara Independent, titled “Hundred-Day Hack.” I even ended up on the Today Show, talking about whooping cough. I never expected to address it again.
But the recent epidemic—more than 4,000 cases in California, the most in a half-century, and 45 cases in Santa Barbara County—is so bad that the Santa Barbara school district dialed up robo-calls to inform parents about it. Here’s the follow-up, the cautionary tale about life after the coughing stops. It’s bad enough to contract the disease—coming back from it can be just as difficult.
In body and in spirit, the bout with whooping cough left that formerly sturdy, confident kid emotionally spent and physically more vulnerable than ever before—and also proved devastating to his schooling.
Despite all our best efforts to restore his previous robust health, every bug that came along stopped off and took up with him. Slight sniffles turned into bad colds and hacking bronchitis that brought back fresh memories of his worst coughing ever; he just couldn’t get healthy again. Finally, his pediatrician referred us to our local allergy and asthma specialist, where he underwent a series of pulmonary exams.
He was diagnosed with “reactive airway disease,” secondary to the whooping cough. His bronchial tubes so damaged and inflamed from all that sustained coughing that he resembled a child with asthma. A complete medical package of powerful drugs was prescribed for him; we spent a fortune on them as we learned about nebulizers and inhalers, steroids and side effects, measuring breathing and how important it was to monitor his breathing capacity twice a day. We stocked our emergency bottle of Prednisone and vials of Xopenex, and used them on panicked occasions.
Far too often he ended up in the physician’s office where the stethoscope revealed twitchy, crackling sounds in his breathing where they shouldn’t have been. He dutifully took his daily doses of powerful Advair and Singulair—new-fangled ways to cope with the effects of an old-fashioned disease and repair his injured respiratory system—even though he hated taking pills and dealing with an inhaler.
The deep, hard, dry cough that wracked this budding athlete’s body whenever he ran was a near-constant reminder of long-lasting toll that brutal disease exacted from him. We got to know the school nurse, the routine of supplying an emergency Albuterol inhaler at the school, along with doctor-signed permission slips for him to use it on a field trip or campout. It took three years of hovering and meticulous attention to his daily routine for him to finally return to his previous state of health.
And today, when the headlines blast out the miserable fact that whooping cough is raging once again, those long days and horrible nights flash back as though they occurred last month.
Back when we went through the whooping cough ordeal the Tdap booster shot had not yet been approved for use in America. Now that it is widely available—and we’re faced with another outbreak—wise parents, caregivers, teachers and others charged with keeping children safe will take the time to protect little ones from the short-and long-term effects of this truly awful disease.
Contact your health professional or the Santa Barbara County Health Department to schedule an immunization and prevent this awful disease—and its aftermath—from spreading to your loved ones. www.sbcphd.org (click on the special section on Pertussis)
Thanks for this public service announcment, I had it too! no fun.
Thank you for this article and the insight of someone how had to suffer through this with her child. Far too many people don’t understand the actual implications and base a decision not to vaccinate their children on unfounded fears. The effects of all the medications that have to be used to combat the illness and complications might hopefully help people see the downside to fearing a shot — not to mention the infant deaths that have occurred.
Hope your son is on the mend now.