I Imagined Life Without My Cough
Lessons on how hope shines through the darkness
The first coughing jag I remember struck in tenth grade, just before the homecoming dance.
Mia, a cute Filipino girl I had a crush on in junior high, agreed to be my date even though she attended a different school. I wore an unbuttoned blue blazer, which hugged my torso a bit too tightly, and Mia, smelling of peach body splash, wore a black dress with spaghetti straps despite the chill in the fall air.
Under the hum of fluorescent lights, I escorted Mia through the parking lot toward the gym, my arm around her soft, bare shoulders, keeping her warm. I wanted to kiss her, but every few steps, a tickle pricked the back of my throat, and my cough echoed against the night.
Mia asked, “Are you all right?” I could only nod.
I coughed through my college years, too. I’ll never forget the long nights spent awake, rasping in my cinder-blocked dorm room.
Experience is a balance of opposites, one supplying meaning to the other, both interdependent.
After graduation, the ordeal continued.
I’d clear my throat in the silent pause of a movie’s climax or hack just when my wife drifted off to slumber. I even had to hold back splutters during my wedding vows.
When teaching or in the office, especially during COVID-19, I’d have to say things like, “Um, sorry about my cough. I’m not sick. It’s just something I’m dealing with.”
Then I’d cough or clear my throat uncontrollably throughout the class or meeting, yearning to hide or escape to a place where I wouldn’t bother anybody.
Over the years, I’ve tried asthma testing and just about every medication I could find — whether prescribed or plucked from the drugstore shelf. I’ve tried honey and tea, humidifiers, nasal rinses — you name it.
It’s not that the cough was always present. It appeared around November, then shook my world for several months before dissipating. The more I coughed, the more it irritated my throat. The more it irritated my throat, the more I coughed.
The cycle was relentless.
Once, during a violent coughing attack, I experienced what felt like a rifle shot in the chest. The force brought me to my knees, writhing on the hardwood floor.
I learned the next day that I had fractured ribs. For months after, the problem was not only the cough but the shattering pain, which ravaged my rib cage with every hack.
It reached a boiling point when I could no longer sleep. I’d sit upright in the blackness, hugging myself, holding my ribs in place as I breathed, trying desperately not to cough.
I survived moment to moment, knowing my ribs could crack again at any time.
Weeks later, holding my hand just before daybreak, my wife said, “There has to be a specialist somewhere.”
This act of love was the turning point.
We all bear some portion of the world’s suffering, and our unique trials equip us to support others in similar circumstances.
We Googled “cough expert,” and there it was: a clinic specializing in coughs just 4 hours away in Largo, Florida.
Soon, I was motoring through the Everglades across Alligator Alley. The sky spread out before me in shocking blue. Tall sawgrass blazed orange and red like trails of fire on the sides of the road. Birds swooped, dove, and landed with claws up into the marshes and pine flatwoods — egrets of brilliant white, screech owls, spotted hawks.
I imagined life without my cough and wondered what it would be like to fly.
I pulled into Largo two hours early and stopped at a Thai restaurant for soup. The place smelled of fish sauce. Pop music played from a portable radio.
My wife and kids called to check on me. I spoke quietly, my heart swelling at the sound of their voices. They were on their way to the movies.
I arrived at the medical complex and rode a musty elevator with yellowing buttons to the third floor. The office manager slid the glass door to the side, took my insurance information, and handed me a clipboard.
“We’re on lunch. You’ll need to wait an hour or so.”
I filled out the forms, listed histories, and checked the boxes. The office staff sang happy birthday to someone behind the partition.
Then, it was quiet for a minute, aside from feint laughter. I scanned the magazine rack — Cooking, Popular Science, Time, Sports illustrated. So much happening worldwide, and I was there at the cough clinic.
“Daniel?” the nurse called, opening a side door. I followed her through a narrow hallway. She was large and pear-shaped, wearing black scrubs and sneakers, and walked with long strides — much faster than I expected. I pushed hard off the thin carpet to keep up.
The doctor’s office had three chairs; steel framed with puffy cushions wrapped in maroon fabric.
“Sit in any seat you’d like,” the nurse said, swinging the door closed behind her. I chose the middle chair.
There are people with the knowledge, skill, and willingness to help. It’s just a matter of valuing ourselves enough to reach out, and then reach out again until the need is met.
I tracked the doctor’s family history of photos on the walls — a wife with a girl and a boy, now a woman and a man. They’d visited Machu Picchu as a young family. The boy married. His hair was combed in the same style he had as a kid. His sister stood next to him with a tight smile. She had no wedding pictures.
The doctor pushed open the door and shook my hand. He reviewed my records with glasses on the tip of his nose, listened carefully to my story, and asked a few questions.
“We’re going to get you better.”
I coughed.
The nurse walked in, ushered me to another room, checked my vitals, and administered breathing tests.
I laid stomach down on the exam table. The nurse swabbed my back with cold alcohol, then began to write or draw on my skin — swirls and lines up and down either side of my spine. It brought familiar comfort and reminded me of my mom tracing letters on my back when I was a kid, asking me to guess them.
Sixty allergy shots. Light pricks in long rows. They didn’t hurt. I turned my head to one side and rested on the thin pillow. The medical paper crinkled as I adjusted my body. Light danced behind my eyelids.
The nurse left and came back. No allergies.
The doctor strode in, numbed my throat with nasal spray, and ran a scope through my nose into my esophagus. He shuffled through paperwork, then adjusted his glasses.
“You have a neurogenic cough,” he told me. “Your throat is hypersensitive. The nerve endings may be damaged. They fire at the slightest stimulus. You can’t control it.”
I closed my eyes again when he left the room and texted a wise mentor. Her words lifted my spirit:
“On a symbolic level, it’s not that surprising — of course, a tender-hearted, sensitive man would have a sensitive throat, too. It’s what gives his kindness a voice.”
The doctor returned and explained, “When an ordinary person inhales particles or gets an itch, they either don’t feel it or swallow and move on. But your brain freaks out. It feels a tickle or a deep, dry sensation, then goes into eject mode.”
He said the meds would relax this response, allowing the nerve endings to heal.
The doctor prescribed medication and taught me breathing and voice exercises to train my brain not to react. He advised me always to carry a water bottle and sip it throughout the day, to use Halls Breezers to soothe the throat — no caffeine, sugar, or acid — to get a chest X-ray and call every two weeks.
“Come back in April. You’re going to be okay.”
Life’s upheavals make our moments of peace sweeter.
I gained an understanding of my cough during that trip, but I learned much more.
I learned that there are people with the knowledge, skill, and willingness to help. It’s just a matter of valuing ourselves enough to reach out, and then reach out again until the need is met.
We must care for ourselves as we would our dearest friend.
Life’s upheavals make our moments of peace sweeter. Experience is a balance of opposites, one supplying meaning to the other, both interdependent. This understanding fosters gratitude for the good times and the bad.
The degree to which I can meet my pain is the degree to which I can meet the pain of others. We all bear some portion of the world’s suffering, and our unique trials equip us to support others in similar circumstances.
Most importantly, I learned there is always hope.
Hope sprouts through the mystery of grace. But it blooms when we decide that another’s suffering is also our own and act with kindness to illuminate the darkness.
Driving home along the moonlit road, I coughed from time to time and still do.
I thought of those in need of hope, wherever they might be. Then, I whispered with resolve what was most alive in my heart.
“There is always hope.”
