There's some sort of lingering coughing illness around this season. I've been told it is "acute bronchitis." Well, I don't think it's very cute. Just about everyone I know has it, even me. I'm starting to think that this is a The Stand scenario, and we will all start dropping dead of Captain Trips soon. I've had it for three weeks and my husband is almost at the four-week mark. Over the course of those three weeks, I've come up with some tips and tricks to control that nagging cough.
Google "best cough medicine."
Learn that 9 out of 10 pharmacists use Delsym.
Buy both the daytime and nighttime Delsym formulas.
Note that they don't work but they do give you the runs. So, you have that going for you, too.
Take Imodium.
Get cranky after being constipated for three days, coughing the whole time.
Wonder what the hell that 10th pharmacist uses.
Try Motrin. Your airways are inflamed, right? Maybe an anti-inflammatory will work.
Hack and gag like a cat to get more snot up after a productive cough. Try not to bring up lunch at the same time.
Drink bourbon to control your cough.
Stop drinking bourbon because the burning makes you cough more.
Switch to vodka.
Add a little orange juice to your vodka because vitamin c.
Snort Nasacort every morning. If you can stop that postnasal drip the grandpa cough will stop, right?
Try a Bloody Mary. You got spiciness, vitamin c, and vodka. This has got to work.
Stop drinking Bloody Marys after you get heartburn.
Take a Tums.
Start coughing and gagging when the Tums powder hits your throat.
Take a nap with a cat.
Kick the cat off of your chest because the fur is making you cough more.
Go to the walk-in clinic.
Take the antibiotics and cough pills the nurse practitioner gives you.
Note that the cough pills are placebos.
Try some of your husband's "controlled substance" cough syrup he got by going to the real doctor.
Note that the cough medicine does not work and keeps waking you up during the night with acid trip dreams.
Put Vick's rub on your chest.
Wipe that crap off after you decide you don't want to smell like your grandfather even if you do cough like him.
Learn to quickly wipe snot and spit from all surfaces from your many volcanic sneezes and coughs.
Eat your weight in chicken soup.
Get so tired of chicken soup that you can't even watch a Progresso commercial.
Learn that laughing is your enemy. It brings on the death cough and scares your children.
If you wear hearing aids, like I do at 43, take them out. Nothing is worse than amplified coughs and sneezes.
Try cough drops.
Learn that a "cooling sensation" is NOT good during winter.
Pee even when you only have to go a little. You DON'T want to cough with a full bladder.
Just change your underwear if you coughed with a full bladder. Go ahead.
Use at least four pillows so you can sleep in a sitting up position.
Learn to work and take care of your family on no sleep because you are up coughing all night and CANNOT sleep sitting up. Who suggested this BS?
Use a Q-Tip and put Vick's rub up your nose.
Do an emergency Neti pot session after you are certain you have set your nostrils on fire, a frozen fire, but still a fire.
Order Chinese food because you don't want to cough on food while you are cooking it.
Eat crab Rangoon and have a big coughing fit from the cream cheese.
Remember dairy products are not your friend.
Just eat your hot and sour soup and silently hate everyone at the table who is enjoying their crab Rangoon.
Take a Sudafed in the hopes that it will somehow end this coughing hell.
Clean out your refrigerator, freezer, pantry, and cabinets after the Sudafed kicks in, coughing the whole time but feeling so energized and focused.
Understand why meth is made with Sudafed.
Feel foggy and cranky when the Sudafed wears off.
Go to the doctor and get a prescription for an Albuterol inhaler.
Feel like you just downed a gallon of espresso and tell off a telemarketer who calls at the wrong moment, all while STILL coughing.
Finally, just give up on ever living a cough free life. Curl up on the couch under a blanket and moan, "I'm dying. I'm dying. This has to be Captain Trips or Consumption. Just shoot me." Or something similar while your family shakes their heads at you and turns the TV louder. Welcome to hell.
Just give up and hibernate. That cough is NEVER leaving.