dpt

When my youngest son, now 10, was born, instinct told me to wait on his vaccinations. I don't know why, there wasn't any real logical reason to wait, but I did. My other four children were fine with vaccinations although my oldest son developed a hard red swelling around his dpt shot when he was 2 years old. The swelling went away when I gave him Benedryl but after that he received only the DT shot.
When my youngest was around 17 months old my Doctor convinced me to go ahead with the immunizations. I agreed. He was immunized on Friday morning and by Sunday morning he was tired, crying, wouldn't eat and I noticed a few raised bumps around the shot site. Nothing major. I gave him some tylenol drops and figured he would feel better by Monday. Sunday evening I woke up to him breathing hard and pale. I rubbed his little belly and took him to the bathroom, steaming it up with the shower thinking it might be croup. Nothing helped but we got through the night. Monday morning his breathing was a little better but he was still pretty unhappy. I decided to bathe him and take him to the Doctor but when I unzipped his footsie pajamas I nearly had a fit. His whole body was swollen and covered in a purple rash, ( I have since never seen a rash like it ). His ankles were so swollen I could barely remove his feet from the pajamas and I could actually see the rash moving up the back of his head. I called the Doc immediately and they told me to give him Benedryl, wait 15 minutes and give it to him again, if I did not notice the rash stop moving, take him to the ER right away. We did this every 15 minutes for 1 1/2 hours before the rash stopped climbing. Scariest day in my life.
We were informed by my Doctor that my son had a severe reaction to the Pertussis vaccine and could no longer receive it. He has since gotten only the DT shots.
Moral is.... trust your instincts. I truely believe that if my son received that shot in early infancy he would have died.
My biggest concern right now is pertussis possibly going around schools ( though no known case has been reported ). Will he have outgrown the allergy or will the actual pertussis virus be worse for him than the vaccine? Tweet