It was the weekend before the superbowl, a beautiful Sunday afternoon. We’d just had our cousin come over. We were having lunch and talking about an awesome project he was working on. By the 3pm, he was gone and we began to wind down. All three of us were sitting on the couch watching TV and just relaxing. Things could not have been better.
That’s when suddenly I had the urge to cough. I had had a cold for the past week and had been coughing up a bunch of “stuff” regularly so this felt normal. Sure, the cold had been going on for longer than normal, but hey, it’s just a cold and this was just another cough.
Neither were true. This was not just a cold, nor what was going to happen next just a cough. As I sat up to cough, my cold turned into a nightmare. I am in my early 40s and in relatively good health. I take no medications nor have any illnesses. We eat well, and are in general good shape. We are vaccinated and believe in annual checkups. So when I had the first syncope (faint or passing out) in my life, my brain had a hard time computing it.
I do not recall exactly what happened, but my wife happened to be sitting next to me and she said “you sat up to cough, coughed, but ran out of air. Then you simply fell face forward on the ottoman and just laid there, with your eye open and pupils dilated”. The next part I remember, is trying to catch my breath, fighting to breath. I recall “white noise” from my wife asking me if I was OK, but I was too busy trying to breath. I was suffocating. I could not take a breath in. To me, it felt like I was trying to catch my breath for about 30 seconds. Then the urge to cough came and I began to cough all types of “stuff” you can imagine. I remember coughing “stuff” for 2 to 3 minutes. I was in the backyard, holding onto our patio table, coughing, and coughing and coughing. Once I was done coughing I was finally able to talk to my wife who had the most horrified look on her face and who was also talking on the phone.
Why was she on the phone? What was going on? Why could I not breath? Why was my daughter crying? What happened?
The answers I was not expecting to hear. She was on the phone with a 911 operator. I told her I was fine, she could cancel that, but no sooner did I say this they were already knocking at our door. How could this be? For how long was I trying to catch my breath? For how long was I coughing? Is the fire station next door to us? The latter I knew, no the fire station was not next to our house, therefore my understanding of time must be way off. Way off.
It seems I passed out for about 30 seconds. During which time my wife called 911. Add to that about 2 minutes trying to catch my breath and another 2 coughing, that was enough time for the paramedics to arrive knocking at our home in what seemed to me like record time.
I have never fainted in my life. Ever. This stuff happens to “other” people. “People not in good health”. You know, the “others”. Not me.
The paramedics were as helpful as ever. They checked my vital signs and said I seemed OK. That it was up to me to go to the ER or follow up with my Doctor. I felt fine. Sure, it seems I had fainted due to a “stupid” cough for the first time ever, but other than that I really was fine. So I opted to not go to the ER.
The next day, Monday, we went to urgent care and they diagnosed the incident as a coughing syncope and gave me some antibiotics. A diagnosis that made sense to me. A diagnosis that mated with my belief that I was fine, that it was just a cold, a tough cold, but a cold nevertheless.
Monday progressed fine. The cough was a little more intense, but the “stuff” coming out was clearing up. So I felt positive. Tuesday came around and the whole day was just like Monday’s. Intense coughing, but clear “stuff”. Good, I thought. Tuesday was the day of my second-ever syncope. Like on Sunday I got up to cough, and like on Sunday I simply recall my wife wife asking me what I was doing on the floor.
My coughing syncope had hit me again. This time it seems as I got up, I again coughed a bit, on my way to the bathroom sink I collapsed on the floor. I know I must have fell because my elbows took most of the brunt and were in pain, and the fact that I too was asking myself what the hell I was doing on the floor. Like on Sunday, I was fine afterwards. I knew where I was. But this time I quickly realized what had happened. I must have fainted. Again? What is going on? This is just the common cold, no? Why is this happening to me?
We went to urgent care again on Wednesday and saw the same Doctor with the same response. This time she ran a few more blood tests but they were all negative. I was fine. It was just the common cold. She explained I was experiencing a vasovagal syncope. A type of syncope normally associated with people who faint from seeing blood. A syncope which occurs when your body is under stress and a drop in blood pressure happens. This drop in blood pressure means no blood to your brain and thus the faint. OK, I guess.
Back to normal life. It’s just a common cold, right? Wednesday’s and Thursday’s cough got progressively worse. So bad, that on Friday I woke up thinking I was having a heart attack. I had the worse pain I have ever had in my mid section. I only knew it could not be a heart attack because the pain was coming from the right side of my abdomen and not my left and after taking an ibuprofen the pain had receded. But by Friday night I could hardly move. I was walking hunched over and moving my right arm was as painful as when I had broken my shoulder blade. I could hardly sleep on Friday night and Saturday was my third visit to the urgent care clinic in less than a week.
This time I saw a different doctor. This doctor took an x-ray to see what was happening to my abdomen and was smart enough to suggest my cough may be pertussis. She swabbed my throat with a long plastic swab she stuck down my nose (it was a weird feeling) and said she’d call me with the results. I got a call that Saturday for the x-rays, but not for the pertussis.
To confirm the pertussis I had to wait until Monday evening. That’s when I received the call from the nurse, confirming I had pertussis. By this point, I had already began researching the symptoms of pertussis and though it’s not very common in adults, I was experiencing all of the worse-case symptoms. So when I received the call I was not surprised. I would have been surprised if it had not been pertussis.
But how could I have pertussis, I was up to date on my vaccinations and remember “this happens to the other unhealthy people” not me. Well my last booster shot had been in 2010 and each booster is for about 10 years. About is the keyword, as the efficacy of the vaccine deteriorates over time, so given it had been 9 years since, I was close to not being vaccinated.
OK, so this is pertussis, we live in the 21st century, surely there is some medicine I can take to get rid of this, right? Give it to me and I’ll take it. I have a busy life to live. I have things to do.
Not so fast. Treatment of pertussis is through antibiotics (it was too late for prevention) and unless you take them BEFORE your intense cough begins, the antibiotics simply keep you from being contagious. Yes, you read this correctly, unless you catch it and treat it early on (or better, prevent it), you’ve signed up for the full ride.
I was in for the full ride (continued…)
