She thought her children just had a cough or fever. A mother shares sons' experience with walking pneumonia

Victoria Marton says she initially thought her 11-year-old son just had a normal cough.

Aston got sick with a cough for about a half-week, around mid-October, but it seemed to be getting worse, said the 40-year-old mother from Richmond, Ont.

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"It was kind of like a barking cough, like it didn't sound good," Marton said as she recounted her family's health scare in a video interview with CTVNews.ca on Wednesday.

"And Sunday night, he was coughing so much that it was waking him up."

She decided the next day Aston needed to see his pediatrician and was able to get an appointment. After getting results back from a chest X-ray, the child was diagnosed with walking pneumonia, the informal name for Mycoplasma pneumonia, Marton said.

The Canadian mother shared with CTVNews.ca her family's health scare as medical experts say cases of the disease and other respiratory illnesses have surged, filling up emergency departments nationwide.

Aston got "significantly better" a few days after he took antibiotics that the doctor prescribed to him, she said.

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Still, he ended up missing nearly two weeks of school while he recovered, Marton said.

Marton’s seven-year-old son, Cooper, also contracted walking pneumonia earlier this month and stayed home for a week. He had a fever of nearly 40 C when he got home from school, which lasted about five days along with a cough, Marton said.

Cooper was also prescribed a five-day dose of antibiotics, Marton said.

The mother says she was surprised about the diagnosis as winter has yet to begin.

While doctors say walking pneumonia is typically mild, Marton considers her family lucky that the antibiotics worked quickly and they were able to see the doctor.

"You think it's just a cough, you think it's just a fever, it's just the sniffles. It's just a flu or something," she said, noting both her sons had unusual "barking" coughing fits. "You don't think that it could be pneumonia. And if it's not treated, that can be really severe."

Surge in respiratory illnesses

Emergency departments nationwide are seeing a surge in patients with viral or respiratory illnesses, including walking pneumonia, says Tammy DeGiovanni, senior vice-president of clinical services and chief nursing executive at Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) in Ottawa.

The CHEO's emergency department normally sees about 150 patients a day, but over the past week, the number of cases has nearly doubled to between 200 and 250 a day, she said.

The rising number of children with viral or respiratory illnesses is not unusual at this time of year, DeGiovanni said. She was not immediately able to provide an estimate of how many were cases of walking pneumonia.

"The last two years we've seen it be really even earlier than normal, but usually we see things picking up this time of year," she said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca on Thursday. "It'll extend into December and into January where we'll probably come to a peak, but it's a combination of illnesses that are in circulation.”

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Doctors say walking pneumonia, or Mycoplasma pneumonia, is common in school-aged children. Children’s hospitals across the country are seeing an unusual increase in the number of serious and more complicated cases of the disease affecting much younger patients this year, according to medical experts.

DeGiovanni says Mycoplasma pneumonia occurs in three- to five-year cycles.

"So, it wouldn't be uncommon that we'd have a year where we see more, but we have many, many respiratory illnesses, and it's not something that we routinely screened for," she said.

RSV and influenza cases will likely pick up within the next few weeks, she said.

How to prevent illness

Health experts give the same advice on how people can avoid contracting walking pneumonia as they would for other respiratory illnesses. They recommend washing hands, staying home when sick, and ensuring vaccinations are up to date, including for COVID, flu and the new RSV one for anyone born this year.

DeGiovanni advises parents to research their options for primary care providers, clinics and health resources to avoid waiting at the ER.