I have chronic bronchitis, and I cough rather regularly, with occasional exacerbations that have me coughing my kishkes out non-stop for several weeks at a time. (I blogged one such episode on this board in December 2013, maybe some of you will remember.) This has happened a few times over the past 40 years.
No doctor has ever suggested to me that I might have Pertussis, nor do I have any reason to suspect so. I’ve kept up with my 10-year boosters.
Now I’m curious. How does Pertussis present, as distinct from just a really really nasty bronchitis cough? If one is coughing one’s kishkes out and it’s just a bad cough, then how much worse would would cough one’s kishkes out if it were really whooping cough? Does whooping cough actually look or sound different? Does it really “whoop” in some way different from just a really bad cough? Are there other obvious symptoms, like high fever or severe nausea or bleeding from various orifices or whatever?
Adults often don’t whoop, though. It’s more often a dry, wracking cough and coughing fits (as in continuous coughing) can last a minute or more. The cough is that severe for several weeks. To get an idea of the severity, many of the deaths are due to inhaling vomitus after coughing so hard it makes the person vomit.
The cause of the distinct cough is that the bacteria kills off all of the cilia lining your throat. So any little bit of dust or phlegm can set up a coughing fit and your coughing through a smooth tube. The whoop is the gasping for air at the end of a coughing fit. The bad news is that by the time you get to the distinctive cough, the bacteria are gone, antibiotics won’t shorten the course, and you’ve already passed the contagious phase.
As Red Stilettos notes the “whoop” of “whooping cough” is not the cough itself; it occurs during the inhalation after the paroxysmal spasm of coughing. For classic pertussis it is that spasm of coughing, often to the point of vomiting after the spasm.
Adults not only don’t alway “whoop”, they often have extremely mild disease. You’d really have a hard time telling it apart from a prolonged viral bronchitis, unless you test for it. But they ARE contagious and can pass it on to babies who are not yet adequately vaccinated. Hence the importance of all adults, especially those who will have contact with infants (looking at you grandpa) getting an adult vaccination for it.
There are manny dumb people on the intrnets.
Doctors can also be dumg, ut it is harder for doctors to be dumg.
I think if you are worreyed enough to ask the intwrnets thn you are worried enough that you shoudl as a doctor wo can EXAMINE you.
If the doctor says you are OK nd you die get super sick you can make LAWSUIT. If the internet says you are OK and you are SUPER SICK you get to be sick and sad.
Well the thimg is, I am got my boostir shotr evry 10 yrs amd I’m not relly so werred about it, bet I was curios about it any way so I thougt I’d ask here on the intrmet (and on the Straigt Doppe Mesage Bord to be spesific) becoz I can haz so much qualty iggnorace-figting hear.
I know an adult who recently had whooping cough begin while we were at a conference. She missed the whole thing because she was in the ER with a broken rib from coughing.
and honestly this is why I think those retarded anti-vaxers get sucked into the mindset. They thing whooping cough is “just a cough,” and measles is “just a rash.” they’re too fucking stupid to realize how seriously debilitating (and deadly) these diseases are.
Seingold, I suspect that one of your 10 year boosters was a Tdap rather than a Td but as it is currently recommended that the Tdap is done only once during adulthood (other than for pregnant women - then with every pregnancy) you may want to verify that they have not all been dTs.
But yes the answer is that it can hard to tell and in someone who gets chronic bronchitis and is vaccinated during adulthood, well if it coughs like a duck …
This. A couple of years ago I was extremely sick, with major coughing fits, one of which was so long and severe that I finally threw up, with the vomiting causing a Mallory-Weiss tear in my esophagus. Spitting up blood prompted me to visit the ER, where my explanation of my coughing fit caused them to immediately suspect pertussis (they actually moved me to a negative-pressure isolation room). It turned out not to be pertussis (I now suspect it was the flu), but that symptom - coughing fits so violent and prolonged that they induce vomiting or break ribs - is a big red flag of suspicion. Confirmation can be had via nose/throat culture to positively ID the responsible bacterium.
I am not a doctor, but I convinced my doctor that I had whooping cough. My symptoms were:
A mild, completely forgettable respiratory bug, followed by
A persistent cough, that lasted for weeks. I don’t think I ever threw up from it, but it was a horrible deep cough, and I was often afraid I would break a rib. My ribs were often sore after a coughing bout. And yes, I sort of whooped on the intake during a coughing spasm.
A few months later, the local paper (the New York Times, I lived in Manhattan at the time) ran an article about how there was a local epidemic of whooping cough among adults who hadn’t been vaccinated since childhood.
As a regular subway rider who had a really remarkable cough (after a really unremarkable illness) during the peak of a whooping cough epidemic, that seemed highly likely.
I haven’t been re-vaccinated, nor have I had a titer to test for antibodies. But I also don’t spend a lot of time with babies. It’s a much more dangerous disease for babies (and probably the elderly) than it is for adults. If my kids breed, I’ll probably get formally tested, just in case.
I get respiratory bugs and lingering coughs all the time, but I’ve never had anything else like that. The nastiness of the cough, the time it lingered, and the lack of other significant symptoms were all unusual.
I just wanted to mention that I read a book about the construction of Penn Station in NY (sadly gone) and it was noted that the president of the PRR Alexander Cassatt (brother of Mary Cassatt) very likely died of whooping cough that he caught from a grandchild. Even I am young enough at 78 to have gotten the DPT vaccine (P = pertussis = whooping cough). Somehow the memory of these childhood scourges has disappeared from our collective memories.