A lot of people, including a dangerously large number of doctors, think of whooping cough as the kind of old fashioned disease that just isn’t a factor anymore. That’s why, when Mariah Bianchi, a critical care nurse, told her doctor she thought she had whooping cough he told her she had to be wrong. He instructed her to keep breast-feeding her newborn son, Dylan. Dylan died two weeks later. An autopsy showed a massive infection of the bacterium Bordetaella pertussis – whooping cough.
Bianchi’s three year old was also infected, but he survived after a serious illness. Bianchi was vaccinated against the disease as a child, but apparently contracted it anyway. Stories like Bianchi’s are part of why, according to a recent LA Times article, booster shots of the vaccine are now available for adults and adolescents.
The booster vaccines weren’t available in 2005 when Bianchi was pregnant.
“I wish a million times we could do things differently,” Bianchi told the Times. “But there’s nothing I can do except tell my story.”
Health officials are now recommending that doctors be aggressive when it comes to the possibility of a whooping cough diagnosis.
“They just don’t think about it, and we really want them to think about it, especially with adults who are around infants,” Kathleen Harriman, a state epidemiologist, told the LA Times. According to communicable disease experts consulted by the Times, if Bianchi had been treated early with antibiotics, her baby would still be alive.
Bianchi is finishing up a master’s degree in healthy policy at UC San Francisco’s Department of Nursing and will start a doctorate program in the fall. She’s studying the question of vaccinations for children, and for parents, which has become a raging debate of late.
If you have an infant at home, or will have one soon, talk to your doctor about the pertussis booster.
