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Nelyn was 17-days
old when he began having trouble breathing…
“We took him to the pediatrician at 11-o’clock Saturday
morning, and he turned blue in the waiting room,” says his
mother Lynne Baker.
Overnight the symptoms grew worse.
“And then at 7-am Sunday morning… he was dead,” explains
Mrs. Baker, struggling to hold back tears, “Because the fluid
was building up so fast there’s was nothing that the doctors
could do.”
Nelyn died of whooping cough… most likely he got it from
his mother.
“But I was fine, I just had a cough,” she says.
“Pertussis can be so mild that your own immune system takes
care of it and you just think you had a two week cold,” says
Joyce Allers, R.N., with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
And while whooping cough is on the rise among adults… it’s
teens who’ve been hardest hit, with 7 times more infections
than a decade ago.
One reason is that most kids get their last booster shot at the
age of 5 or 6.
“Now we have discovered that protection against Pertussis
wanes or wears off five to ten years after your last dose,” says
Allers.
For teens the disease can be as mild as a cold… or the
cough can be severe enough to break a rib. But no one is more vulnerable
than infants before their first vaccine, at the age of two months.
No one knows that more than 17-year-old Brandon Baker, who lost
his little brother. “I have a picture in a little box in
my room. Say goodnight to every night.”
With a new baby in the house, Brandon and his mom say they will
get that new booster shot when it’s available later this
month…
“Certainly those families that have young infants or expect
to have young infants they may want to consider getting a booster
to protect the whole family against Pertussis,” says Allers. |
