At this writing, I have been coughing for 72 days. Not on and off coughing, but continuously, every day and every night, for two and a half months. And not just coughing, but whooping: doubled over, body clenched, sucking violently for air, my face reddening and my eyes watering. Sometimes, I cough so hard, I vomit. Other times, I pee myself.
Both of these symptoms have become blessedly less frequent, and I have yet to break a rib coughing—also a common side effect. Nor do I still have the fatigue that felled me, often, at my desk and made me sleep for 16 hours a night on the weekends. Now I rarely choke on things like water, though it turns out laughing, which I do a lot of, is an easy trigger for a violent, paralysing cough that doctors refer to not as a cough, but a paroxysm.
Since I came down with pertussis, more commonly known as whooping cough – waking up with it on Saturday, August 31, it felt like a light fever and a tightness in my chest – I’ve since celebrated the Jewish high holidays, covered Washington’s response to the crisis in Syria, hosted several out of town friends and a dinner party or two, attended the funeral of a close relative and the wedding celebration of a close friend.
I have also given a lighter strain of the whoop to my mother, and, somewhere in there, managed to turn 31, all the while whooping. I even spent a long weekend on a beach in north Florida, where a friend commented on my now killer abs—odd since, because of my illness, I had not been to the gym at that point for 35 days. “The coughing,” she said cheerfully, “must’ve helped!”
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I currently have whooping cough & 3 of my 4 kids do as well. 2 of the kids had their vaccines for it, the fourth hasn't, she's only 6 months. Their dr said there are multiple strains of whooping cough circulating but the vaccine doesn't cover all of them, that's why so many people are getting it despite being vaccinated.
I've had whooping cough for 2 months up to now and, although the paroxisms are less frequent, they're still there! How much longer I wonder.