Peg Kerr's Journal

Regarding the cough -- coughs can become self-perpetuating (like any other irritation with a scratch/itch/scratch/itch feedback cycle) and sometimes require a serious barrage of medications to knock down to nothing. (Years ago, Ed and I visited an out-of-town friend who had a cough so horrifyingly awful I seriously wondered if maybe he had TB. No TB, and in fact he was over the virus, but his lungs were really irritated and the terrible cough was ensuring that they stayed that way. His doc gave him a super-powerful cough syrup and the cough was gone by the time we left town.)

Ed once coughed for a month, finally went back to the doctor, and came home with some prescription cough syrup, a steroid inhaler, and possibly also a nasal spray. It took all those things together to get the damn cough to stop.