pertussis

California has officially declared the pertussis or whooping cough outbreak an epidemic.  In fact, the golden state is on track to break a 50 year record number of cases, and 5 infants have died this year in California alone.  At GetzWell, three of our own patients (all unvaccinated) have had it in the last few months!  Fortunately these were not babies and the kids are healthy again, but it was a miserable period of many weeks of uncontrollable coughing.  The most common scenario is a mild cold that lasts a few weeks before the coughing begins.  If your child has a protracted cold (lasting more than 10 days without improvement) or a cough following a  runny nose that’s lasted a couple weeks, call us for an appointment.