Walloping Whooping Cough

It’s 3:00 am and you’re coughing. In fact, you have been coughing so much that it feels like you’re about to rupture a lung or something. Every cough brings tears to your eyes. You could have whooping cough or pertussis.

Whooping cough or pertussis is a highly contagious respiratory infection. The illness is characterized by bouts of persistent coughing and draws its name from the whoop sound that happens when you attempt to draw in a breath. The coughing could last for weeks or even months after the onset of illness. Prolonged coughing causes air to be expelled from the lungs, then the gasping for air follows. But a person can still have whooping cough without making the whooping noise.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are an estimated 24.1 million cases of pertussis worldwide and about 160,700 deaths per year. In 2012, the most recent peak year, CDC reported 48,277 cases of pertussis in the United States. This is the largest number of cases reported in the United States since 1955 when public health experts reported 62,786 cases.

Whooping cough is considered a childhood disease, particularly affecting infants who are too young to have the full vaccination protocol for this illness. The pertussis vaccine is usually administered when children are 2 months old, 4 months old, 6 months old, 15 to 18 months old, and 4 to 6 years old.

Symptoms of whooping cough are similar to having the common cold including a runny nose, nasal congestion, reddish watery eyes, fever, and cough. Symptoms will usually worsen in about a week or two, with thick mucus accumulating inside your airways resulting in uncontrollable coughing. These severe prolonged coughing attacks may result in vomiting, a blue or red face, extreme fatigue, and a high pitched “whoop” sound during your next breath of air.

Infants may not cough at all. Instead, they may struggle to breathe and stop breathing for a time.

Whooping cough is caused by a bacteria called Bordetella pertussis. When a person coughs or sneezes tiny droplets in the air others can become infected.

It gets risky when the vaccine that you get as a child wears off as a teenager or adult during an outbreak. And outbreaks seem to be occurring more frequently. More often, teenagers and adults recover from whooping cough without any problems.

Infants younger than 12 months who haven’t received the regular vaccinations remain at high risk for this condition. Complications that can occur with infants with this condition include pneumonia, slowed or stopped breathing, dehydration or weight loss due to feeding difficulties, seizures, and brain damage.

Because infants are at the highest risk for whooping cough, they tend to be the ones that require hospitalization. In fact, complications can be life-threatening for infants younger than 6 months old.

The vaccine is really the best way to protect yourself against infection. With that in mind, experts recommend booster shots for those where the effects of the vaccine have worn off like adolescents age 11 or older, pregnant women, and other adults.

Your doctor may prescribe an antibiotic as a precautionary measure if you have been exposed to someone who has whooping cough if you are a health care provider, are pregnant, are younger than 12 months, or have a weakened immune system.

Diagnosing whooping cough in its early stage can be a difficult task because the symptoms resemble a cold, flu, or bronchitis. At times, your doctor may simply ask questions regarding your symptoms and listen to the cough.

Medical tests may need to be done in order to properly diagnose whooping cough. Such tests may include a nose or throat culture and test where your doctor takes a swab or suction sample from the area where the nose and throat meet so the sample can be checked for whooping cough bacteria; blood tests where your white blood cells can be checked (a high white blood cell count indicates the presence of inflammation or infection); and a chest X-ray to check for fluid or inflammation in the lungs which occurs when pneumonia complicates whooping cough and other respiratory infections.

Whooping cough is treated with antibiotics which kills the bacteria that causes the condition. As far as the cough goes, regular over-the-counter cough medicine is not very effective for whooping cough and it is highly discouraged.

Some tips for recovering from this illness at home are to get plenty of rest, stay hydrated, eat smaller more frequent meals, clean the air (keep out air polluters such as smoke that may cause coughing fits), and prevent transmission by washing your hands often and covering your cough.

If you have questions regarding whooping cough, don’t be afraid to consult your doctor immediately. Your path to recovery is in your own hands.