Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Eli 14.1 and the Case of the Curious Cough

Eli 14.1 has big dreams about everything.

As unlikely as it sounds, he has a chance to achieve them, because to him, they're not dreams. They're goals, and he approaches them that way. So whether it's hockey or card magic or school or anything else, he works hard.

However, there's one thing that could stop him.

For years, he's had periods where he develops a cough. That's not unusual, necessarily, but the details seem quite unusual, which is why I'm writing about it today, because I hope that one of you guys will recognize the description and help me understand what's going on.

Here's the deal. On day one, he'll cough. On day two, he might cough twice. There then commences a period where the cough progresses at micro-velocity.

No matter how slowly, though, it does progress. It's unstoppable.

By day ten or so, he'll be coughing quite a bit. It's a dry cough. It might bring on some kind of infection, though, in which case it becomes "productive".

If it doesn't turn into bronchitis (sometimes it does), it will take another ten days or so for it to finally come to an end.

We've seen this enough times that we can see it coming from miles away, but we can't stop it. Pediatricians have prescribed inhalers (Flovent and Albuterol), but we can't tell if they help at all. He takes Flonase (a nasal spray for allergies).

Nothing that we've tried seems to be effective.

It's exhausting, because he doesn't sleep well at night, so he drags through days until it finally gets better. He's so robust and energetic on regular days that it's hard to even describe how tired this makes him.

It's possible that he has cough-variant asthma, but it's not exercise induced, which is normally one of the causes.

Regardless, this is driving us nuts. You guys have helped me figure out all kinds of things in the past, and if you can help me figure this out, you will have made an enormous contribution to my life (and to Eli's).

Thanks in advance for any detective work you provide.

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