Okay, bringing this up again because my yearly/bi-yearly cough has started. It's not a huge issue and I feel bad complaining about it, but...that's what the thread is for, right? :-S

When was 15, almost 10 years ago, I caught a cold that didn't go away. I had a hacking cough for 9 straight months while my doctor tried to figure out what was going on. Finally, he tried Advair on it and it worked. He said, "That tells me it might be asthma or allergy related, but it worked, so just take it whenever you cough for a long time."

Since then, I get a terrible cough around October that lasts till December, and from March to about May. I've tried every sort of cough suppressant and cough drop there is, they don't do a thing. When I get a coughing fit, it feels like my throat closes up and I'm trying to breathe past a tiny pinprick of a hole. Drinking water while the fit is on doesn't relieve the problem, just delays it till I need to stop drinking to breathe. My coughing fits happen randomly throughout the day and all night, interfering with sleep. During the month and a half that I'm coughing, I can't sing (my favorite thing) or talk much. It interferes with my job (my students now know that if I start coughing and can't stop, I signal my class president to take over, they silent read and I go stand out in the hall and hack my head off). People look at me like I'm disgusting because the cough is so loud and nasty sounding, but I'm not in any way contagious.

So far, things with doctors haven't progressed beyond the "it might be asthma or allergies" stage. Until 2011, they just gave me Advair which took a couple of weeks to work but seemed to work okay. In 2011 the Advair stopped working, so they switched to Dulera, which I was told is like Advair but more powerful. It still takes a couple of days to work and doesn't do anything against a coughing fit.

The last 2 weeks, I've been coughing again. Went in to the doctor, she gave me Dulera and Nasonex. She said it could be asthma or allergy related. As I have the past few times, I asked if I could get tested for allergies or asthma (asked for a referral). As she said last time (as doctors have said before her): "Nah, it's not that bad, and you want to be sure you need to be tested before you spend that money."

Now, it's not life threatening nor really all that inconveniencing (compared to everyone else), but I am sick of coughing! :-(

Thanks for letting me rant.