she didnt take me to the doctor i never received a formal diagnosis or more importantly treatment i just fought through and after a while it went away after that whenever i caught even the slightest hint of a cold the coughing would return it was painful embarrassing and unpleasant during the colder drier months id start coughing and couldnt breathe when i laid down it was miserable and i dreaded winter because of it as soon as i was an adult and living on my own i went to the doctor actually i went to a lot of doctors but none of them ever mentioned anything about vaccines i seemed to get bronchitis very easily which was attributed to something called coughvariant asthma but this condition was chronic and usually a result of childhood asthma which i hadnt had so how did i get it one doctor asked me if it was possible id ever had whooping cough but probably not right because you would have been vaccinated he asked when i told him that no i actually hadnt been completely vaccinated as a child he was shocked he explained that it was very very possible likely even that i really did have whooping cough also known as pertussis and that it had contributed to my asthma which i will probably have for the rest of my life luckily i now live in the heat and humidity of florida so my symptoms arent nearly as bad as when i lived up north but still it sucks and each case of the sniffles sends me running for the albuterol inhaler a lot of parents are afraid that vaccines will damage their children but its important to understand that sometimes not vaccinating them can be worse its probable that my lack of adequate protection against pertussis made me susceptible to the disease that damaged my lungs unfortunately i will never be able to know for sure because my mother didnt take me to the doctor to find out however the doctor who suggested this seemed to think this was the most likely scenario had my mother had me vaccinated i truly believe it could have been prevented at the very least if i had gotten the right shots id know for sure that it wasnt the pertussis i dont blame my mother for what happened to me and im not angry with her because i know she thought she was doing the right thing instead i blame fear and ignorance as an adult entering college i chose to receive all the necessary vaccinations and then some that i hadnt received as a child and im glad i did i never had a negative reaction to a shot a nasal mist or an oral vaccine and now i can rest assured that i wont get sick or worse get someone elses child who may not be able to be vaccinated sick as well still the way i was raised affected me