Whooping Cough

[km gresham]

Our boys were immunized as were my sister's, but her boys came down with what the Dr. called "Whooping Cough Virus" - it wasn't true whooping cough, but similar. It was ugly. She had a schedule of medicating them with albuterol with a nebulizer then laying the boy over her lap and beating on his back for several minutes with her hands. 3 boys - every day for weeks. The Cough sounded like they were going to die. :eek:

http://www.aap.org/family/whoopingcough.htm

[Bruce Taylor]

My infant daughter and I both came down with whooping cough (pertussis) about ten years ago. We had a couple of months of pure hell.

At the time, we had several neighbours who were too damn clever to vaccinate their kids against a disease that can kill. :mad:

My own daughter had been "immunized," but the vaccine is just partially effective. If everyone vaccinates, diseases like this can be controlled...but everybody has to do their bit. If we get complacent (or stingy with tax dollars) the old plagues will bounce back with a vengeance.

[ 06-09-2005, 07:47 AM: Message edited by: Bruce Taylor ]

[Ian McColgin]

A nasty ailment. I somehow contracted it when I was 15 just before my first winter climb of Mt Washington. I couldn't do the whole climb and maintained a fire in good shelter right about the treeline till my gang came back. I did not really get it as to h ow sick I was for another day.

In the infirmary my coughing spasms were so violent that I bounced over the hospital bed rails and broke my ulna landing on the floor. They eventually used some pretty heavy opiates and even so I ended up with pleurisy tears.

I might have preferred modern nebulizers, albuterol, and all that stuff, but the morphine stuff they doped me with was pretty cool till they took it away.

[km gresham]

I think people don't understand how devastating the diseases we routinely immunize against were.

Children regularly died from diseases that because of immunization have become non-existant or just a nuisance.

Go to an old grave yard and see whole families that died within a few days of each other. Maybe people wouldn't be so complacent if they understood.

[Ian McColgin]

Entirely too true. In the US we're but a generation removed from the days of high child mortality and childbirth mortality.

[Meerkat]

Originally posted by Ian McColgin:
Entirely too true. In the US we're but a generation removed from the days of high child mortality and childbirth mortality.Well, at least 2 anyway. My parents were born in the 20's when childhood immunization was just starting to take off and penicillan had been discovered (1922, IIRC).

I also think mortality started turning down pretty sharply as of about the turn of the (20th) century, as sanitation became better (indoor plumbing!) and there was a lot less horse manure in city streets.

[Stiletto]

What diseases were spread by horse manure?

[paladin]

my entire family..all the kids..came down with it when I was about 14 also (1954)...the only cure then was a tea made from the leaves of the chestnut, with a little lemon and honey and as i remember it lasted a long time and was horrible...

[Phillip Allen]

There is a three acre graveyard behind my house filled with children who didn't make it past their second summer...