Oh Great, whooping cough!

[asterroc]

My Dad apparently has whooping cough, and I was apparently exposed to it while visiting for Thanksgiving. Teh intarwebs mentions that vaccination while incubating can stop it, and otherwise you can be sick AND contagious for months, so I'm going to call up my doctor tomorrow and find out if I should get a vaccination.

ETA: Turns out Dad hasn't been diagnosed yet. His doctor has been out of the office for a week (his own daughter's sick), and while Dad has a 103º fever apparently it's not bad enough to yet find another doctor or go to an emergency room... He's been partly self-diagnosing, and partly talking with a friend who is a doctor about it. If either Dad gets an official diagnosis or I experience symptoms I will IMMEDIATELY get myself to my doctor. Whooping cough would put me out of school for up to two months, either b/c I'd feel so crappy, or b/c it's so contagious.

Comments

[sammka.livejournal.com]

Isn't it also responsive to antibiotics? It will certainly stop you from being contagious. From what I can see the main reasons antibiotics don't help whooping cough is that most people have already overcome the infection by the time they're diagnosed, and are just suffering aftereffects.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, various sources that I've read say that (1) the vaccine applied after infection but before symptoms can weaken the disease and prevent you from being contagious, and (2) antibiotics after infection but before symptoms will actually stop the disease. However Dad hasn't yet been diagnosed with it, so I feel that either would be excessive. I will call the doctor when Dad gets diagnosed or when I see symptoms, whichever comes first.

Man, I don't know whether the thought of feeling sick for two months, or the thought of having to stay home so I don't infect the world for two months, is worse. It'd be nice to get the rest, but I don't have that many sick days. Hooray for the sick day bank.... :(

[sammka.livejournal.com]

I recently learned that whooping cough is ridiculously contagious, so if he has it, the chance you have it are pretty good. BUT I don't think that you'll be contagious for two months - a course of antibiotics seems to kill the bacteria, just won't make you feel better.

Perhaps you should hurry your dad along to get his diagnosis, and then start pre-emptive antibiotics?

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you should hurry your dad along to get his diagnosis, and then start pre-emptive antibiotics?

That's my goal. I think I've sent him and Mom three separate emails about it today, the latest one pointing out that Nga Boo was potentially exposed to it. I'll call them tomorrow night too. And I'm planning to call my doctor during the day tomorrow to get her opinion, even if Dad hasn't seen his doc yet. I've told both Foxtrot and T$ to nag me to make sure I call my doctor.

The only thing is I'm reluctant overall to take unnecessary antibiotics since I'm always doping myself up with them for my HS. If it *is* needed though, especially if it has a chance of preventing a 2 month period of illness and/or contagion necessitating quarrantine, I'll do it in a heartbeat.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

*nods* I'm guessing the antibiotics for your HS are targeted, not oral/systemic? It seems from my reading that it doesn't take a really long course of antibiotics to kill off the bacteria, which is hopeful. I agree you still don't want to use them totally unnecessarily, but you might be contagious before you become systematic, so if the diagnosis is confirmed I would personally go right ahead and take the antibiotics.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

The effective HS antibiotics are oral/systemic. I use a topical antibiotic wash in the affected areas as a prophylactic, but I am doubtful as to how well it works. There's no practical way to get antibiotics under the skin, whether during a flare-up or not. I used to use various -cillins (oral) until my staph developed resistance to them all, but it's still susceptible to levoquin (quinalone family) so I take that orally for 7 days.

Recently we're trying NOT using that and instead going for a quick office appointment to get a cortizone shot to treat the inflammation rather than the bacteria that make my immune system decide to do inflammations. The intention is to avoid developing more resistance, especially to something as nasty as levoquin. (They work by messing up DNA, and if I don't drink enough water it will crystalize in my pee. Yay, I get to piss mutants!)

[sarrichelle.livejournal.com]

ive heard that it was "back". i've never heard of anyone having it in my whole life until recently.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I was talking with a 70-year-old coworker today and he says he had it. I'm under the impression it was common in our grandparents' generation, then our parents all got vaccinated against it, but our generation wasn't. That and the fact that our parents' vaccinations have "worn out" are why it's making an unfortunate comeback. I really hope he doesn't have it.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

A friend in public health (the same one who explained that it was so contagious) blames the -most recent- crop of babies for the resurgence of the disease. Our generation, apparently, was vaccinated - it's in with the vaccine for tetanus and diptheria (DTP, now DTaP).

Apparently vaccinations for pertussis wear out by the end of childhood, but children have always been the primary vectors of contagious diseases. If children are vaccinated, adults won't get it. So when the babies our generation and our parents' generation were getting vaccinated, everyone was safe. Now, though, people are more wary of giving their children vaccines (due to false fears that they cause autism, or some other problem). Once there's a critical mass of unvaccinated children, those kids will get it and spread it to adults whose vaccines have worn off, which is apparently what's happening.

q10 had pertussis in college, as did a lot of other folks at my college. There was an outbreak the year before I got there.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

From doing more research, it's looking like my friend's theory is still just a theory - people don't quite know why there is an upsurge in adults. Kids seem to be protected by vaccinations as much now as earlier, implying that maybe it isn't widespread non-vaccination of kids that is causing a change. But our generation did get the vaccine.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Is there a whooping cough -only vaccine? From my research it seems there's only a combo one with tetanus and other things, and I got the tetanus (alone I believe) a month or two ago, so while I've heard that a booster can help if one's been exposed, I doubt I should double-up the tetanus shot. And I could've sworn I'd heard that children nowadays are not being vaccinated for it, so maybe that's what I was thinking before, and maybe that's causing the upsurge. *shrug*

[sammka.livejournal.com]

It doesn't look like there is a pertussis-only vaccine. That is sad. But, children are vaccinated for it, or at least the CDC is still encouraging it and lumping it in with DT. Apparently at age 11, kids nowadays were just getting a diptheria/tetanus booster, with no pertussis, but now they're adding pertussis to that booster too, so that kids will have immunity to pertussis into adolescence.