I know this isn’t at all autism related, but this story just keeps bugging me.
South Bend couple loses baby to pertussis
The story is heartbreaking. A couple has fertility problems and tries for years to have a baby.
But the couple’s desire to have children soon turned to heartache as Katie suffered miscarriage after miscarriage.
“We started to think that it would never happen,” Craig said during a recent interview at the family’s home.Katie later went to see a specialist in Chicago and was diagnosed with a rare blood clot disorder that doctors said was affecting her ability to carry a baby to full term. She was prescribed medication.
Finally, after five years, Katie became pregnant with a baby girl that far surpassed previous pregnancy terms.
They finally have a baby, only to lose her at one month from pertussis.
Days later, pertussis tests came back positive.The diagnosis blindsided the family. How could Callie have contracted the illness? She had been far too young to yet be immunized against the bacterial infection. Series of shots against pertussis do not begin until infants are 2 months old.
The couple had also kept outside family and friends away while Callie was home in an effort to protect her from sickness. She had been home from the hospital only 2 1/2 weeks.
St. Joseph County coroner Dr. Michael O’Connell confirmed to The Tribune that Callie likely died of an infectious-type illness such as pertussis, but he said conclusive tests will not be complete for several more weeks.
These sorts of stories are very difficult to discuss. This family is going through pain beyond anything in my experience and I certainly don’t want to add to that. But this story is a real example of one reason I vaccinate myself and my family. I can’t imagine thinking that I or one of my family had passed on an infectious disease to a family with an infant or someone else vulnerable.
Left Brain Right Brain 
My daughter is now recovering from the pertussis infection she acquired from an unvaccinated birthday party guest who developed pneumonia after weeks of spasmodic coughing. Fortunately, although vaccination clearly is less than 100% effective (and although her immunity may have waned, as she was due for a booster shot), immunized kids who are infected generally develop a milder form of the disease than the full course experienced by nonimmunized children. Indeed, her pediatrician concurred with my suggestion that my child had respiratory syncytial virus (which is epidemic here now) when I brought her in to check if an albuterol inhaler would help, but tested her, anyway, because pertussis had been reported in our area.
I’m relieved that my child’s case was so mild; my parents were told that I would likely die when I was hospitalized with severe whooping cough decades ago. It’s sad that children still do die from this now-resurgent disease. It’s also sad that the reurgence of pertussis is autism-related to the extent that it is associated with reduced vaccine uptake caused by a barrage of misinformation.
My county has had a high rate of pertussis cases lately, which concerns me. I got a DTaP shot when it was offered for adults at my kids’ school. At the shot clinic, I heard horror stories from some adults who had it run through their households last summer; no one died, but it was awful.
One of my friends, living in my county, fully vaccinates her kids, but that doesn’t stop 100% of everything – 2 of her kids came down with pertussis, and one went to the ER for it one night.
(My mother almost died of it as a baby, herself. Between that and the polio cases in my family almost 2 decades before I was born, I know what these diseases can do, and I want to prevent my kids from getting them.)