Coughing nails
The Cough, my old friend and ancient nemesis, is back. This is the famous cough that visits in the spring but especially the fall, that stays and makes me retch and spasm until I weary of its company and get the magic orange inhaler that makes it go away for another year or six months. For two years in a row the magic inhaler has worked wonders.
This year… not so much.
Wednesday, two weeks ago: after three weeks of The Cough, visit doctor, demonstrate cough - not difficult, as inhaling deeply for the stethoscope invariably sets off a two-to-five minute coughing fit that ends with the obligatory retch that occasionally ends up with me throwing up just the tiniest bit inside my own mouth (yes, life is that good) - get my magic inhaler. “You have a bit of a temperature,” he says, “come back if you start coughing up anything disgusting.” I start taking some of my leftover codeine cough syrup that I normally hate because it fucks me up but good, but it does stop the cough long enough to let me get to sleep.
Saturday, a week and a half ago: am coughing up something disgusting. See a weekend doctor at the clinic, who says, meh, asthma. Get a disgusting blue inhaler that makes everything taste repulsive and a precription for antibiotics, “though if it’s a virus there’s no point.” I say that there is fluid in my throat and my lungs burn when I cough, but he’s not interested in looking, just shrugs and says “sure, asthma” and starts writing out prescriptions.
The antibiotics need to be taken in the morning, with no dairy, and by all the warnings from the pharmacist will cause my skin to burst into flames if I encounter sunlight. I eat stew for breakfast for a week.
A week and a half later the inhalers and anibiotics are all done or almost so, and the cough is still omnipresent.
Back to yet a third doctor, who says actually does look at my throat and then shrugs and says, meh, allergies. I am prescribed three different sets of pills. The conversation with the pharmacist goes as follows:
pharmacist: This first one, take first. It’ll cut your stomach acid so the second pills won’t hurt so much.
Bill: Er?
pharmacist: This is second pill. Take it with lots of food or it will hurt your stomach. Side effects are: [five minute litany of side effects ranging from increased appetite to irritability to stomach pain to Bad Things to wearing plaid, kicking puppies, and voting republican].
Bill: Sweet jesus?
pharmacist: You’ll be taking eight of them.
Bill: A week and a day’s worth?
pharmacist: No, every morning.
Bill: Sweet jesus?
pharmacist: And here’s the third pill. Common side effects include increased coughing.
Bill: …
pharmacist: You’ll be taking that one for a month.
Bill: My life is bliss.
After three days of pill number two, I am convinced its real purpose is to make you feel so utterly miserable that going off it and just being normally sick again will feel like paradise by comparison.
I’m on all the new medication. The cough is worse. Right now I have a fever and my throat hurts and I retched and threw up in my mouth a couple of hours ago.
The doctor who thinks it’s allergies recommended me to an allergist but is also having me sent for x-rays of chest and upper respiratory system as is standard for persistent coughs.
I’ve been living with a smoker for five years.
I have a cough that won’t go away.
I’m a little scared.
It won’t be anything. It never is.
When I was young, I was always told that I wasn’t sick, or not as sick as I said I was. I was making it up, being melodramatic, being manipulative, faking to get out of something… it was never real. No matter how I felt, I was told to stop lying, faking, being lazy, being manipulative, looking for attention.
And so even now I don’t believe myself when I’m sick. I don’t go to the doctor unless someone makes me, because I feel inside that yes, I must be faking it, must be trying to get attention, aggrandizing some petty scratch in my throat to get people to feel sorry for me.
I don’t feel like I am. I feel sick and miserable and so, so very tired of coughing, weary to tears of constantly retching and hacking, burnt out from only getting to sleep at 2am every day because I’m coughing myself awake until I’m so tired I can fall asleep while coughing.
But underneath that… there’s the voice that’s telling me that I’m playing it up and that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me. Stop being so lazy, so weak, such a slacker. Stop whining.
It won’t be anything. It never is.
I’ll wake up in the morning with a sore throat as usual but no fever, and cough and throw up a little and tell myself that I was just being melodramatic as per usual. And I’ll go get my x-rays, and there’ll be nothing there, just as there was nothing there three years ago. But… even if it is melodrama, even if it’s just a virus this time, or allergies, or stress… there’s still always a fear with the cough. Even if it’s nothing. Even if it’s just me, the big faker. Even if it’s nothing this time, and the next time… every time I’ll wonder if it’s maybe my turn now. Melodramatically or quietly in the middle of the night, it will be there as long as I know I have taken the chance it could be. Because… no matter how much the voice in the back of my head tells me to drop it, I do live with a smoker. And I do have a cough that won’t. Go. The fuck. Away.
I’m a little scared.
I don’t want to keep being frightened by this.
So tonight I did something I swore I’d never do: I asked the consort to stop smoking.
For me, if not for him (because “for him” is something that has doesn’t mean enough to him, clearly).
So I won’t have to be afraid of this any more.
It isn’t fair to him.
It’s not my choice to make.
But there’s a part of that choice that I have to live with, and right now it’s scaring the hell out of me.
No well-wishes, no prayers. It’ll be nothing. Eventually, one of the medicines will work, and that will be the end of it.
But there will be one less awful maybe in there for the next time, and the time after that. And right now, in the melodramatic lull of fever and fear, that’s a lot.