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]

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.