Good Riddance: The Irritation of a Never-Ending Cough

On lost sleep, gym sabotage, and our May Zoom gathering.

We’ve all had one: A never-ending cough that comes on after a virus overstays its welcome by weeks, sometimes even months. It’s the kind of cough that no over-the-counter medicine or Breathe Easy tea or cough drop can fix, and it can really take its toll on your body, sometimes even more than whatever illness brought it on in the first place.

For the last month, I’ve been suffering with this kind of cough after coming down with a flu-like virus that lasted only a couple days. The cough, though, has stayed stuck in my lungs, requiring everything from antibiotics to steroids to an inhaler, something I’ve been fortunate to never have to use until now. It’s the dry kind of cough that creeps up on you at all hours of the day and night, exploding from your chest with a forceful spasm that is often uncontrollable and leaves you exhausted and wrestling with a pulsing headache.

When I get a cough like this, it’s so incredibly frustrating because it hinders so much of my ability to get any meaningful work done (which is only amplified by my sudden lack of sleep from having to wake up constantly to aggressively cough). It sabotages everything from going to the gym in the morning (an elevated heart rate seems to bring on a coughing fit!) to focusing on work during the day (why work when I can cough?) to going out at night to an event like seeing a play (you better have those cough drops unwrapped and ready to go!) Plus, the actual stress of a long-term cough can create some serious health issues: the pressure and strain on your body from one single hard cough is akin to a chest compression during CPR. Too much coughing too forcefully can fracture a rib, rupture your diaphragm, and a whole lot more. And the only thing that seems to be able to get rid of it is the one thing it loves to waste: time.

My cough is finally easing up after many weeks of throbbing headaches and restless nights, so I’m letting go of my frustration over all the time wasted coughing and resting from coughing. Instead, I’m trying to reframe it as a helpful pause that I didn’t realize I actually really needed after a pretty busy first half of the year. (Not to mention, you know, living through the downfall of democracy.) Perhaps the cough was trying to teach me something about the limits of my own body or reminding me to pay closer attention of when it needs rest to repair. So good riddance to that awful clench in my chest that would lurch me out of bed with a hacking cough. With it, I’m letting go of the feeling that the time I spent healing and getting better was anything other than just that.

What are you letting go of this week?

May’s The Short and Sweet, Saturday, May 24 at 1pm ET: May is my birthday month, and I’m throwing myself a birthday for our monthly series live over Zoom for paid subscribers, The Short and Sweet. I’m going to take you on a deep dive behind the scenes of what it was like to write Dark Sparkler, and open the floor to any and all questions you might have about writing, acting, publishing, or directing, all while wearing a birthday hat and eating a giant slice of carrot cake. Join me with your favorite birthday dessert, we’ll read some poems, celebrate, and chat! May’s The Short and Sweet will take place on Saturday, May 24 from 1pm-2pm ET. The Zoom link will be emailed to paid subscribers about thirty minutes before the start of the Zoom.