Call it fatherly intuition or what you will, but I had a hunch that’s what she had. We took her into the doctor after a week, and got seen by a nurse practitioner. I explained the symptoms (which I will get to in a sec) and all the NP saw was an ear infection, so we got a script for Amox and off we went. Two days later, I was still a little nervous. my daughter came down with cold-like symptoms on Wednesday ten days ago (or whatever the number is).Runny nose, cough, sneezing. Most of those symptoms, except for the cough, went away. The cough was usually fairly normal and dry during the day, but she she would have these fits where she spit up. But at night, she developed a cough that included posttussil vomiting, redness of face, and a distinct “whoop” sound. But it wasn’t consistent. Sometimes she would do it; sometimes not. So I took her in, explained the symptoms, and all she was diagnosed with was an ear infection.
A day or two later, I look up a little about whooping cough. I didn’’t know much about it, but the sound she made is exactly the kind of sound I would associate with a cough named “whooping cough.” Then I read up on the symptoms and they lined up exactly. Now, I know doctors hate self-diagnosis, so I took that into account, but it was nagging at me that the symptoms fit exactly: starts out with cold symptom, child acts fine and happy in between fits, and fits may be few and far in between (she was showing maybe 2-3 episodes per day, mostly during the night when she was sleeping on her back.) But yesterday afternoon, I got so stressed out that I actually called to speak to the nurse practitioner, and she (I assume to placate me and ease my mind) told me to go into the ER and get a pertussis swab and chest x-ray.
We were seen by some nurses and a doctor who made it seem like they were surprised that our doctor (who they knew) sent us to the ER. I explained that it was the nurse practitioner and that she was probably doing it because I was strongly showing fear that it may be whooping cough. (I’m not entirely sure if I had said “is it possible that this is whooping cough,” but I definitely showed what I was worried about by describing the cough as a whoop.) The doctor asked us if she and we were vaccinated. We said we were. He said he had looked up on the internet the stats, and that the vaccine is something like 85% effective at this age, that he’s only seen one case of whooping cough before, it’s not whooping cough, he’s releasing us, and the lab results won’t be back until Monday or Tuesday anyway. So we go home, assuming this was all a waste of time and money.
Today we get a call. Whooping cough.
Not something I want to be right about, but there you go. Fatherly intuition I guess. It’s very unlike me to get worried, but something really wasn’t sitting right with me with the initial diagnoses. We got a script for anthramycin, a quarantine, and orders to talk to our primary care doctor about getting a script for ourselves. The doc didn’t seem too worried about it, though. But, still, I’m glad I followed up enough to goi to the ER. I was really second-guessing myself before I took her in, and even moreso after speaking to the staff.
If it helps anyone, this is what a spell looks like.
