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the hundred-day cough
By | January 3, 2012
If you started coughing today, January 3rd, and coughed for a hundred days, you’d finish up on April 12th.
I know an adult who broke a rib with this kind of cough (but had to keep coughing with the broken rib. Made it hard to work). I know someone who had a prolapsed – well, you don’t want to think about the details. Suffice it to say, plenty of folks have weeks of incontinence with this kind of cough.
Click here for Dr Leigh’s “Pertussis Facts” handout (all ages).
Click here for a visual guide on how to diagnose a cough (all ages).
Click here, here, and here, for guidance on how to recognize “vaccine-preventable diseases” in children. If you don’t give your kids shots, it’s your responsibility to know how to spot, for example, whooping cough, measles, pneumonia (from HiB and/or pneumococcus), etc.
Why do I say, “your responsibility”? Isn’t that what doctors are for?
The reason we even have vaccinations is because those particular illnesses are difficult or impossible to treat. Your doctor needs to know as early as possible in the course of the illness, what is going on. Your doctor is also required by law to help keep track of epidemics*, and they can’t do that, if you didn’t tell them your suspicion.
Your doctor almost certainly did not receive training in the signs, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of vaccine-preventable diseases – your doctor will have to look up and review that information. (Note: your doctor knows more than really seems reasonable about the microbiology and micro-patho-physiology of these critters – but that’s not the same as knowing how a baby looks when they have pertussis, knowing about proper nursing care for a kid with rotavirus, or knowing specific danger signs, beyond any physician’s simple “Hmmm, could this be encephalitis?”)
Note: I am speaking about family doctors. Pediatricians, no doubt, have superpowers to detect vaccine-preventable diseases and their complications. Unfortunately, if you do not give shots to your kids, you may already have been kicked out of your pediatrician’s practice.
Headlines from the internets this morning:
The rise in pertussis, or whooping cough, has reached the level of breakout in at least one New Mexico county.
DEXTER, Maine – Officials here hope they have seen the last of a whooping cough outbreak that has infected 33 students in the district so far this school year.
APPLETON [WI] – School District officials warned parents this week… of pertussis at five schools
The number of whooping cough cases continues to grow in Eau Claire County [WI]. The health department says there have been 41 confirmed cases. That’s ten times as many as the past several years.
Officials said there were seven cases of whooping cough reported in [Dane] county in November and 12 new cases reported since the beginning of December. [WI]
Statewide [in IL], the reported pertussis cases so far are on track to double the 648 recorded in 2009, and already are well above last year’s 1,056 reported illnesses. Nearly 10 percent of the current state total came in during the week between Dec. 13 and Dec. 20 [2011].
“In Minnesota we are seeing over 1,100 cases each year.” [Infectious Disease Consultant, Mpls]
Four additional cases of whooping cough have been identified at an Alamance County elementary school. [NC]
The number of whooping cough cases has increased dramatically in Utah County… In 2011, 155 residents were diagnosed with the highly contagious respiratory disease compared to 38 the year before.
As of Oct. 27 there have been 129 confirmed cases of pertussis,” said Dr. Gary Goldbaum, health officer and director of the Snohomish Health District. This is a drastic difference from the 25 reported cases in 2010. [WA]
Just across the [Oregon] border in Washington, 6.2% elected not to vaccinate [in 2011] – one of the highest rates of non-medical exemption rates in the country after Alaska (9%), Colorado (7%) and Minnesota (6.5%). Oregon’s exemption rate rose to 5.6%, up from 5.2. (The percentages refer to kindergarten students.)
*FYI – Only a few of the things your doctor is required by law to report to Public health:
Immediately, day or night: Measles, Rubella, Diphtheria, Polio
Within 24 hrs: HiB (causes pneumonia and meningitis), Bacterial meningitis
Within one working day: Pertussis, Mumps, Hepatitis A, Tetanus
…Also, of course, Rabies, Plague, Syphilis, Tuberculosis, Mad Cow Disease, etc.
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