Whooping Cough, Part 3: Test Results Come Back Positive

My entire family came down with Whooping Cough. Here are the results of our pertussis tests: some of us are positive.

The other posts in this series:

1. Whooping Cough – first sick kid and positive pertussis result
2. Waiting For Pertussis Results – had remaining kids and hubby tested
3. Part 3
4. On the Mend
5. Post Pertussis

We got the Whooping Cough/Pertussis test results from the Hospital today.

Victoria – positive
Ruby – negative
Sadie – negative
Ilana – negative
Julien – negative
Caleb – positive

Still waiting to hear about hubby.

Julien and Ilana are symptom free at this point. It is possible that they WILL come down with whooping cough however.

(Update: they did eventually come down with symptoms. My assumption is that everyone who tested negative hadn’t built enough antibodies yet. Our illnesses were identical.)

Sadie is asymptomatic too, although she does have coughing at night. It’s not reaching the choking stage, and probably never will, even if she does get WC eventually, because of the Vitamin C treatment. Is this a false negative? Or does she have something else that causes a cough? Or has the Vitamin C kept the 4 kids who tested negative from falling ill?

Caleb is also doing better, as is Zoe. Neither of them are having the choking cough, and Zoe went back to school today. If I made decisions on her behalf, I would have kept her home to rest more,  as her sleep is still interrupted, but sadly I’m the underappreciated Evil Stepmom 😉

I would not be surprised if she caught something again from her schoolmates in a very short period, as she is especially vulnerable now.

Three days ago I started to get sick. Moderate fever (102-103F), sore throat, chills, body aches, headaches, cough. Time will tell if this is also Whooping Cough – I actually seem more sick than the kids did at this stage, as they presented with milder cold symptoms.

Other than the sleep deprivation that comes from waking up whenever anyone in my house coughs, I’m feeling better today.

Vic seems to be doing well. She only had two coughing episodes last night, lasting just seconds each time. I felt terrible because I had forgotten to give her a nighttime dose of Vitamin C. I won’t forget again!

I am so very thankful for many things: that these cases have been as mild as they have, and that I knew about the Vitamin C treatment which has been nothing short of miraculous for us, and that Victoria is an older infant and can handle the coughing episodes now.