angharad_gam (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
angharad_gam) wrote2017-10-15 09:23 am
angharad_gam) wrote2017-10-15 09:23 am
All about the whooping cough, possibly part one...
A brief timeline first to hopefully clarify things. Today is the last day of the South Australian school holidays, which are two weeks long. Preceding these two weeks (with no overlap) were the Queensland school holidays, also two weeks long. As I believe I mentioned last time I posted, my parents were intending to spend the last week of our school holidays visiting us (as indeed they did and went home yesterday). Now to the drama....
Last Sunday, aka the day before they were due to fly down here, mum and dad rang up and told us my nephew had just been diagnosed with whooping cough. He was not terribly ill (he was vaccinated), but he had spent the entirety of the Qld school holidays staying with mum and dad. He had been ill while he was there (in the second week of his visit). They took him to the doctor just before he went home and it takes a week for the whooping cough test to come back, so they had only just discovered that he had it.
We spent half the day going around on whether or not mum and dad should cancel their trip. Whooping cough is most contagious in the first few days you are ill, which meant that it was almost two weeks since mum and dad had been most exposed. Whooping cough has an incubation period of 7-10 days, although it can be longer. Neither of them were sick (although my sister, who had visited them during the relevant period, was). It seemed like if they were going to get sick, they would have by this point. In the end, we decided that they should come.
All went swimmingly for the first couple of days. Then Andy and I went off on the overnight trip we had planned to celebrate our anniversary (and which, to be honest, was a big motivator for deciding in favour of them coming - his family are much much more reluctant to kid watch, especially if it involves more than sitting around for a couple of hours). When we came back on Thursday, mum was sick. The next day she was still sick, if not worse. On Saturday she went to the doctor to get some antibiotics. They don't help much with the illness, by all accounts, but they do help to make you less contagious, which is probably important when you have to get on a plane. We won't know if it's actually whooping cough for another week.
If it is, and I have caught it (and I have not been vaccinated against it - something my mother did not see the need to tell me until now) it might be two weeks before I get sick. But at least if I do get sick in the next couple of weeks I will know it is likely more than just a cold and not go randomly spreading it around. There is nothing to do now, but play the waiting game, and as Homer Simpson so sagely said "The waiting game sucks..."
Last Sunday, aka the day before they were due to fly down here, mum and dad rang up and told us my nephew had just been diagnosed with whooping cough. He was not terribly ill (he was vaccinated), but he had spent the entirety of the Qld school holidays staying with mum and dad. He had been ill while he was there (in the second week of his visit). They took him to the doctor just before he went home and it takes a week for the whooping cough test to come back, so they had only just discovered that he had it.
We spent half the day going around on whether or not mum and dad should cancel their trip. Whooping cough is most contagious in the first few days you are ill, which meant that it was almost two weeks since mum and dad had been most exposed. Whooping cough has an incubation period of 7-10 days, although it can be longer. Neither of them were sick (although my sister, who had visited them during the relevant period, was). It seemed like if they were going to get sick, they would have by this point. In the end, we decided that they should come.
All went swimmingly for the first couple of days. Then Andy and I went off on the overnight trip we had planned to celebrate our anniversary (and which, to be honest, was a big motivator for deciding in favour of them coming - his family are much much more reluctant to kid watch, especially if it involves more than sitting around for a couple of hours). When we came back on Thursday, mum was sick. The next day she was still sick, if not worse. On Saturday she went to the doctor to get some antibiotics. They don't help much with the illness, by all accounts, but they do help to make you less contagious, which is probably important when you have to get on a plane. We won't know if it's actually whooping cough for another week.
If it is, and I have caught it (and I have not been vaccinated against it - something my mother did not see the need to tell me until now) it might be two weeks before I get sick. But at least if I do get sick in the next couple of weeks I will know it is likely more than just a cold and not go randomly spreading it around. There is nothing to do now, but play the waiting game, and as Homer Simpson so sagely said "The waiting game sucks..."
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