The cough showed up sometime in December. Gleek brought it home from school, or possibly from somewhere else, but she was certainly the cough’s first host in our house. I didn’t think much of it. Coughing happens in winter time. But it didn’t go away. Then Patch started coughing and so did Link. I felt it coming for me only a few days before ConFusion. I did my best to fend it off, but I did not succeed. Somewhere in there it became not just a cough, but The Cough. It will lurk for hours and then pounce causing a fit of coughing and throat spasms, which are just lovely for those of my children who have more sensitive gag reflexes. It is also not fun to listen to: cough, cough, cough, sputter, gag, cough. When I hear it begin, I pause and listen to see if I need to go help with clean up once the coughing subsides.
Other than the side effects of coughing (abdominal strain, headaches from gasping for breath, sore throat, and clean up) I don’t feel really sick, just more tired and less focused than usual. Gleek is up and around despite still coughing. Patch and Link are both home from school. Again. In fact my morning was spent communicating with teachers via email, trying to sort out how to handle an extended absence. Because I’m not certain when Link will be able to head back to school. We did the obligatory doctor’s visit yesterday and determined that The Cough is likely a viral affliction and mostly what we need to do is wait it out. The doctor did swabs just in case, but mostly treatment is symptomatic.
I don’t like The Cough at all. It is annoying and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. I went yesterday to find look at various possible remedies for reducing coughs. So far cough drops have been the most effective suppression method. We’re also boiling a huge pot of water on the stove in the hope that humidifying the house will help. Even if we could reach the point where Patch and Link were well enough to function at school, that would be good.
There were a few years in which I had a cough the entire three months of fall. It wasn’t contagious so far as I could tell (nobody in my family got it), but it definitely wasn’t pleasant.
We’ve had long slow colds this winter too, though not continuously. The little one gets to 90% better, and stays there for a while, then gets a new cold regularly. The adults can mostly shake a cold in just couple of days, but afterwards our sinuses stay irritable for at least a week. It’s a lot like still having a cold, particularly if night time coughing interferes with sleep. What really helped was running a humidifier in each bedroom at night. (That wasn’t cheap, so we tried a lot other things first, but it was cheaper than missing work.) A doctor mentioned other medication options, like a light dose of codeine at night, but we didn’t end up needing it.