Coughers, unite!

You know who you are. You’re the one hiding at the end of the church pew so you don’t have to climb over 10 people when you feel a coughing fit coming on.

You’re the one with a pocket full of Hall’s cough drops and quietly eating them like Life Savers because you’re desperate to stop the constant hacking and coughing.

We hide, we sniffle, we hold our breath until the sensation passes and then, bam, the tickle starts in our chest and gallops up through our windpipes like an out-of-control locomotive.

People look at us as if we should be able to control the cough. Trust me, if we could control that coughing, we’d have done it long before your dirty look shamed us into hiding.

I spent a week on the couch right after Christmas with the flu. Chills, fever, body aches – I had the whole checklist. But the worst and most persistent symptom was a hacking cough that decided to stick around after the fever subsided.

Two weeks later, I’m not coughing as much but the monster’s still a squatter in my lungs.

The cough’s an unwelcome tenant I want to evict but it’s proving difficult to get rid of an annoyance that reminds me it’s here every five minutes.

My mom has remained vigilant about my coughing ever since I told her I was laid up on the couch.

Our daily phone calls have a checklist – what was her blood pressure in the morning and if I’m over the flu. Not five minutes into the call, I’ll start hacking away.

“You still have that cough,” she’ll say.

At this point, I think I’m going to have this non-stop cough for the rest of my life.

“You need to take something for that,” she’ll say.

That’s an understatement.

I’d gone to the doctor when I first got sick in case there was something to lessen the symptoms. The doctor prescribed “pearls” for coughs.

For some people, the pearls work like a charm. For others, not so much. I’m in that second category of not finding relief with the pearls.

I tried every home remedy I knew to help with the cough, starting with hot herb tea with honey. That remedy worked as long as I was drinking the tea, but there wasn’t long-lasting relief.

Staying hydrated was another suggestion, so I drank gallons of water but all that did was make me cough in the restroom.

I tried slathering Vick’s Vapor Rub all over the bottoms of my feet before I went to sleep. All that did was ruin a perfectly good pair of thick socks and make our bedroom smell like a eucalyptus factory.

The Internet was filled with all kinds of alternative medicines to take, most of which I couldn’t pronounce, but I thought were worth a try.

Either those remedies could only be found in Sweden or everybody else read the same articles I did and bought out the store.

If prescription drugs and online remedies couldn’t help, then I knew I had to find a middle ground that could offer some relief.

It was back to the drugstore, where I picked up some NyQuil in a dual package – one side for daytime, the other side for nighttime.

The nighttime meds did help with the cough. But the lingering side effects made me feel like part of the Zombie Apocalypse for an hour after I got up.

The DayQuil worked better than the herbal tea and the pearls, and they’ve been my lifeline for the past week.

Coughers, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Once the flu symptoms are gone, give it three weeks and you’ll be back to your old self.

Until then, please pass the NyQuil.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.