WARNING:RANDOM POST AHEAD

I hate it when I am reading someones blog and they don't include pictures! I am a picture "freak" as so many other bloggers are. I rarely leave home without my camera! Who knows when a blog worthy picture will arise. Having said all that, today I am at work supposed to be working, but blogging instead. Hey, when you're working for your husband...for free...what's he gonna do fire me....HAVE AT IT!!! LOL!! Thank goodness Jason rarely reads my blog(which is another post in itself). Anywhoo....no picture for this post.

While we were in Austin on vacation I saw a huge billboard that read"vaccinate your children:pertussis kills"! Ever since I read that sign I have a sick feeling in my stomach every time my baby girl Kenna looks me in the eyes. I guess "sick" isn't the best word to use...maybe anxious or overwhelmed. Many of you know that Kenna Mae came down with Pertussis or Whooping Cough when she was only a week shy of her 2 month vaccines. We have no idea where or who she got it from. She began coughing in the middle of the night while Jason was in Michigan at his grandfathers funeral. The second that first cough came out of her mouth I KNEW she was sick. I could feel in my gut that this was different. Kooper had had RSV, bronchitis, croup...this was different. I had heard every form of coughing that is coughable....this was not one of them. She would go through little "fits"as they call them, and not be able to breathe...and then a big WHOOP would come out. After four trips to the ER and the doctor...still no diagnosis. Whooping Cough, at that time, was too rare and basically unheard of in this day because of the vaccine. It never even crossed the doctors minds and because it comes in "fits" she had never even coughed in the doctors office or the ER.

The final straw came when one afternoon about a week after the cough began I was holding her and she began coughing. She coughed so hard and so long without catching a breath she turn purple in my arms. I was at my wits end. After yet another trip to the ER and another "bronchitis" diagnosis, I got on the Internet and began to search. It was becoming evident that the huge breath she took after her fit was important. Every search came up whooping cough. So, I got on the phone and called Jason's brother, Craig, Uncle doctor, crying and said, "I have to figure out what is wrong with her or I feel like she is going to die". I can't tell you how many times a day I thought she wasn't going to catch that last breath. Craig immediately said....whooping cough! I felt so helpless. The doctors were not seeing or hearing the same sounds come out of her tiny body that I was. So, that evening, I brought out the video camera and videoed one of her attacks. That morning, I marched that video up to the clinic and showed her doctor what I had been seeing for a week. From that moment on it was like a whirlwind of activity. They rushed her to the hospital and immediately started high powered IV meds. They also began vaccinating EVERYONE who had been in contact with Kenna since the cough began. Friends, family, anyone. The health department was involved the entire time. Phone call after phone call. By that evening they realized that Hamilton hospital was just not equipped to handle the seriousness of this disease and they care flighted her to Scott and White in Temple Texas where she stayed for 10 days in the PICU. I swear someday when I am rich and famous I am donating beds to that place. We slept in a rather HARD recliner for 10 days.

All in all, Kenna Mae is a miracle to us. We didn't realize just HOW serious this illness was until we returned home. We received yet another phone call from the health department. This time they were following up on whether we were able to bring her home alive. At that moment tears began to fall. 9 babies died that year from whooping cough in Texas. Kenna Mae, praise you Lord, was not the 10th. To this day just hearing the word whooping cough or pertussis literally gives me chills. Having said all this, my message is this. Vaccinate your babies. Forget all that CRAP about vaccines not being safe. Kenna Mae almost died because her dr. appointment was a week later and she had not had that first round of pertussis vaccine. Whooping cough is becoming a problem once again in the united States. The PICU nurses told me that Kenna wasn't the stereotypical pertussis baby. Most babies are Hispanic, who's parents have taken them to Mexico to visit family, where there are no vaccines for such diseases. ANYONE can have pertussis. In children, not infants, it just sounds like a bad cough. But if infants contract it from them...the odds are against them. I've heard that they are now giving pertussis vaccines to the families of pregnant woman as a precaution. AWESOME!! Follow your gut Momma's!! Kenna most definitely would not be blessing my life right now if I hadn't been persistent.

Today, Kenna is a happy, health, 2 year old. She is a miracle to us. Her personality is the reason she survived pertussis. Thank you Lord for this hard headed, stubborn little gal. She would not have survived without her will.

This is where a cute picture of my girl would be appropriate!!