Whooping for Joy?

"It's not whooping cough. We're telling you, Doctor, you're wrong. It's not possible. That was wiped out in our state ten years ago. You have the wrong diagnosis."

"The Maine CDC says you don't have whooping cough, Mack, but they don't know what they're talking about. They think that just because there hasn't been a case diagnosed in this state since 1974, it's impossible to have one now. They refused to listen when I said that you were out of state when you likely caught it. Bureaucrats can be very stubborn. It's okay. We know what you have. And I have already notified everyone in the waiting room that they will have to be tested. Don't feel bad about that. You had no way of knowing. Now, let's see what can be done to give you some relief." Dr. B discussed my case with my mother while I coughed and gasped for air in my chair in the corner.

I'd managed to choke off coughing while he talked, but as soon as he finished, they burst out of me. I grabbed breaths desperately between fits, and it was no wonder why the illness was called "whooping" cough. Each attempt to inhale was like sucking air through a pinched-off straw every .25 seconds, so it sounded like air escaping from a balloon being held to produce a squawk. If you've ever experienced that kind of breathing, you know what I'm talking about. When I couldn't get a full breath, I coughed until I was ready to faint. It was awful, but it was nothing compared to what was coming.

Dr. B's office was forty minutes from home. The one relief I could find was to sip lukewarm water to ease the tickle in my throat. However, it was 1984, and the world of water bottles did not yet exist. Neither did cup holders in our car. We still drove the 1974 Chevy Suburban: No power steering. No power brakes. No power windows. No radio. No floor in the back seat (that wasn't a standard feature). Three-on-the-tree manual transmission. No cup holders. I had to wait until we got home.

During the ride home, we discovered what happened when I couldn't get a drink and couldn't stop coughing. I threw up. Good thing the Suburban was all vinyl.

That was what was coming. By that time, I had been sick for about eight days. I'd already missed six days of school at the beginning of my eighth-grade year. Just before school started, we took a family trip to Illinois to see my mother's father, and while we were in the Chicago area, we visited the Brookfield Zoo. Dr. B posited that I likely picked up whooping cough there.

I attended the first week of school, and then I was coughing so much that I missed week two. I did not return to school until almost Halloween. They didn't even require me to do all the work I missed. I'd been utterly unable to do any while I was out, so I picked up where everyone else was, and that was that. But the in-between? Yikes.

As the youngest of five children, I was already babied, but I got extra doses of love heaped on me during my whooping cough saga. Sadly, I couldn't take advantage of much of the kindness. As I said, lukewarm water soothed my throat. Anything hot or cold, however, triggered coughing. Coughing ended in throwing up. At first, I could stop it by taking a drink, but as the virus moved into high gear, nothing did any good. By Week Three, I was coughing to the point of puking more than twenty times a day. (It's funny the things you remember for the rest of your life.) What made it worse was that my dear, beloved mother felt so sad for me that she bought ice cream and sherbet for me every week, not realizing that it caused me to cough. I didn't have the heart to tell her! Every time I ate it, I let it sit in my mouth, hoping it would warm enough not to create a tickle. Then I'd swallow it, crossing my fingers that it wouldn't create a tickle. Within a minute, it would create a tickle, and what went down cold came up cold.

Gross things make me laugh. I'd get grossed out by ice cream making a second appearance, so I'd start giggling. Laughing made me cough. Coughing made me...well, you know. It was a vicious cycle. I'd drink lukewarm water to soothe my throat. Then I'd have to pee. I'd walk to the bathroom. The effort of that tickled my throat. I'd cough until...you know. Then I'd use the bathroom and return to my bed. The exertion would make my throat tickle again, and the cough and end result would happen again. Forty years later, it's comical, but it was utter misery at the time.

Sometimes, just the cold of the ice cream in my mouth would cause a tickle in my throat. I wouldn't even get to swallow it before the coughing began. At some point, Mum would come to check on me, and she'd find a bowl of melted ice cream. I'd lie and say I wasn't hungry, but the truth was that I couldn't bear to eat it. It was all going to return to the waking world, anyway.

My sister and her husband lived with us, and their two-year-old boy would run around the house mimicking me. "Eh-eh-eh," he would do for my cough, followed by "wheeeee?" for the sucking in of air. They all laughed. I was not amused. I was 14 and miserable. Now, find it hill areas.

During return trips to see Dr. B, Mum used rinsed-out milk cartons as emergency throw-up containers. Yup, that was back in the day when milk was purchased in half-gallon treated cardboard containers, and we always washed ours out to use for food waste when doing the dishes. Consequently, we frequently had extras drying under the sink, so I'd take one in the car and use it when the coughing fits led to their inevitable ends. Then I'd fold down the top to prevent aroma and content leakage. It was a great, highly portable solution to my very real problem, and it prevented the despoiling of the car again.

After the most-dreadful week of coughing to the point of upset, the virus began its retreat. Three weeks later, I returned to school. However, I discovered that the virus had left two solid imprints on me that would not subside for several years.

First, I could not run or otherwise overly exert myself without triggering coughing fits that led to puking. As someone who always hated physical education, that proved to be a boon. All I had to do for PE class was show up.

Second, I refused to vomit for a period of about fifteen years after that illness. Maybe that refusal lasted longer. I'm not sure. Other than the times when over-exertion caused it, I utterly refused to do it. Nothing could make me allow it. For lack of a better explanation, I'd had my fill of vomiting. I believe I was out of college before I could do it again without feeling queasy; wait, that's not right. Haha. I suppose I mean that I could do it again without feeling violated, which is how I'd come to feel when I had whooping cough.

And by the way, it turned out that Dr. B wasn't the only pediatrician who reported a case of whooping cough to the Maine CDC that year. They had to eat their words and acknowledge to him that they were wrong. He could call my case what it was. Mum and I were pleased. Dr. B was always a good doctor.