Mom says her infant turned blue, “coded in my arms” from Kikhoste (exclusive)

It started with a normal cough When Natalie Falanga was only eight weeks old.

Her mother, Angela, took her to the doctor, who said it was just a cold, and recommended that she give her child a nebulizer with saline.

The mother of Natalie and 2-year-old Dominick tells people exclusively, “I am not a worry mother” and explain that she initially assumed that her daughter’s illness would be quickly improved.

But two days later, on October 19, 2024, Natalie’s cough worse. Malverne, new, mother tells people that she was out with her children and gave her son lunch when Natalie “turned blue right in front of my face.”

At the pediatrician’s advice, she and her husband, Joseph, rushed their daughter to the hospital, where the doctors said that Natalie’s “Oxygen was good” and released her.

The family went home, but the next day Natalie turned “blue seven times,” Angela tells People, explaining that her daughter’s condition continued to worsen as she coughed and could not breathe.

On October 20, 2024, they returned to Cohen Children Medical Center, where Natalie was diagnosed with whooping coughOr peephost. From there, Angela says that Natalie’s condition deteriorated rapidly.

“Within 12 hours she coded in my arms,” ​​says Angela. “I hold her in my arms, and she stretches her arms straight out, up above her head and turns completely blue within seconds, the worst I’ve seen. They take her from me. My husband’s screaming. I scream.

“They take her from me, and they try to get her stable, and then we run upstairs to Picu, and they intubated her,” she tells people and explained that Natalie’s “oxygen sank and they had to put her on a ventilator.”

Angela says a nurse in Cohen Children’s Medical Center said to her: “You must be strong for her. She can hear you.”

The next few days, she explains, was “worst days in my life.” Angela, who works as a X -ray technologist, says she saw a devastating scan of her daughter’s lungs the day after she was admitted to the hospital.

“I looked at it and I fell on the floor,” she says. “She had no left lung. They made an X -ray in you when they admitted us, and her lungs were perfect. The next day, when they put her on the ventilator, collapsed the entire left lung.”

Angela says that a normal scan would show “two black lungs and you will see 10 ribs on each side” – but in Natalie’s case, “her left side was just all white, so it was filled with fluid (and) mucus.”

Natalie underwent one BronchoscopyUnder which doctor “sucked out everything,” says Angela.

While Natalie began to heal after her bronchoscopy, her health match was far from end. She stayed at the hospital for 19 days, ten of which spent on a ventilator.

Angela was later told that when Natalie went on the ventilator, she had a 50% chance of survival.

“You think that when she comes from the ventilator she is good? No, now she is a drug addict,” says Angela, explaining that her daughter must calm down on the ventilator, and as a result, “where she depends on Fentanyl And morphine. ”

“She had shaking, she had a fever,” Angela tells People. “She just suffered.”

Angela says that doctors who had worked at the hospital for several years said they had never seen whooping cough for eight weeks old.

This year, cough cases in the United States are shining. According to US Centers for Disease ControlPeople’s drops are almost twice as much as they were this time last year.

Angela tells people that she shares her daughter’s story now because she doesn’t want “another mother to go through what I went through.”

As someone working in the medical field, Angela was updated on her DTAP vaccine, which protects against whooping cough. But, she explains, everyone spends time around a child should get the shot because infants are not eligible for the vaccine until they are two months old.

“We have no idea how she got it. I mean, I didn’t take my children to nightclubs,” says Angela. “It could be anywhere.”

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She shares that even though she understands why parents can be hesitant to vaccinate their children, the DTAP vaccine “has been out there and can influence the children the most. We should definitely advocate for it.”

Angela says: “The babies suffer the most. We have to be their voice. They have no voice. If I could tell other mothers, vaccinate your children so you don’t have to go through what I went through, and just another child does not have to go through it, I feel I made as a difference.”

She adds, “I never want anyone to think what we did. I still have nightmares.”