The Cough Saga
I'm so tired of
dealing with this, and I'm sure that all of my friends and
family are tired of hearing about it. And God bless the ones
who have to actually hear it. When I was growing up and having
asthma attacks, it would get to my dad after awhile and he
would ask me if I could please stop barking. I suppose you
could take offense at that if you didn't know my dad. It never
offended me. In fact, I think the same thing all the time
now.
So for those who are interested, here's the run
down on this cough that seems to have no cause.
This
started around the 2nd week of February, 2001. I have hayfever,
so I didn't give it a whole lot of thought. We were going to
Phoenix to visit Josh during Scott & Craig's spring break,
which was the first week of March, so I figured I'd get a
break while we were there. (Different plants and all.) Boy, was I ever wrong about that.
If anything it got worse. But I still treated it as allergies
until July. My prescription for my Claritin ran out because I
was past due for my annual follow up with my allergist. The
cough was very, very bad by this time and I knew I needed to
see a doctor one way or the other, so I decided to kill two
birds with one stone and went to see my allergist, Dr. Amar. He thought I
had bronchitis and put me on antibiotics. I went back after 2
weeks and the cough wasn't much improved. He did a breathing
treatment and breathing test. The test came out fine, barely
on the borderline for asthma. He said that he felt cough was
caused by sinus drainage compounded by reflux. I have been
being treated for reflux for about 6 years now, so that
sounded fine to me. He changed my Claritin to Claritin-D,
changed my antibiotic and sent me home for another 2 weeks.
When I returned 2 weeks later the cough was still the same. He
gave me a different antibiotic and instructions to call if
there was no improvement. Since I felt that he had done all
that he could do (and because I was afraid this could be heart
related because it sounded a lot like the cough my mom had) I made the next appointment with our general
practitioner, Dr. Wimberly. He felt that the problem was sinus
drainage complicated by reflux, but also felt that I had a
sinus infection, so he gave me yet another antibiotic. Two
more weeks and still no change. (I do have to admit though
that during these times I did show signs of having had sinus
infections that were being cleared up, so I don't consider it
a complete waste.)
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