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Carol Perkins: Coughing Your Head Off

Previous Column: Hamming It Up

By Carol Perkins

"You're gonna cough your head off," I declared as Guy shook the house with his deep cough.

For over a week, he had hacked like a freight train, even after a bottle of powerful cough syrup. In the middle of the night, when the cough medicine had worn off, he rocked the bed with his cough. When he declared that he had slept all night and was happy he hadn't coughed, I couldn't believe he didn't wake up through such barking, like a child with the croup. I didn't sleep all night, for sure.

At the end of the third week, he complained of a stiff neck. From the stiff neck, he went into an unbearable pain running up the back of his head. He refused to go to ER until the next morning when he said, "I've got to have some relief." Off we headed to Bowling Green.


I called his primary doctor there and his nurse, even though I explained his pain, said the doctor could see him at 3 that afternoon. I was stunned. Guy has been going to this doctor for twenty-plus years and he wasn't going to see him. I wondered if the nurse even told him.

When I suggested the doctor might want him to come there, she said, "He's booked pretty solid." Really? I then went to the ER where he went when he had his heart attack. Something inside told me that his doctor should have said, "Come on by and I'll see you." I live in a different world, I guess.

Once in the ER, Guy was immediately taken back to a room and a doctor arrived and ordered tests. He suggested that his coughing was the problem, but ordered scans to make sure. As was typical, I had gone straight to a blood clot or meningitis. The outcome was that Guy pulled a muscle in his neck from coughing so hard.

"You won't believe this, but we see a lot of problems from coughing," the doctor said.

Guy came home with a muscle relaxer and a pain pill. He even smiled today-a slightly sideways, medically induced one. Who knew coughing "your head off" could be close to the truth?


You can contact Carol at carolperkins06@gmail.com.


This story was posted on 2023-07-22 10:43:19
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