Pertussis is a WEIRD thing to get. Sometimes it takes several WEEKS after exposure before you actually have symptoms. And it varies WIDELY with people in terms of exposure-to-symptom time, degree of symptoms, recovery time, etc.
Near as we could figure out, it was a little over 2 weeks after I was exposed to it before I developed the cough. I didn't think much of it because I had been on a week-long 100-mile trail ride across Montana! (photos here)
I just kept saying, "Well, I inhaled a quart of Montana dust, of course I'm coughing."
The coughing got worse over the next couple weeks, and about the third week of it I was doing the gasping stuff (I don't see how people call it a whoop, but okay). I was exhausted (they say you cough so hard that you can actually break a rib -- I believe it). Went to the doc. Antibiotics. No improvement. Back to the doc. Albuterol inhaler.
Meanwhile, about the time that the pertussis had totally run me into the dirt, my (undiagnosed then) Crohn's starts to really give me serious trouble. I mean, I spent the whole winter sicker than a dog, and by January I was like a staggering zombie.
It's hard to say exactly when I got over the pertussis, because the last of it kind of overlapped with the onset of serious Crohn's trouble, so it kind of runs together in my mind. I would estimate, though, that it was about 4 months from the time I started coughing till the time I stopped coughing. Maybe a little less. The azmacort inhaler was the only thing that helped, but it's big guns and you don't want to casually use that stuff unless you really need it.
Good luck!! (My mom still lives in Illinois, by the way, and she told me there were over 100 cases of pertussis early this year around the Chicago area.)
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Re: more questions on Pertussis!
