Coughing

[ladyofastolat]

When I get a cold, it often ends up going directly to my chest, and staying there for several weeks. This is not something that I choose to happen deliberately. It is not actually very nice to be unable to sleep for coughing or to be unable to walk far because you can't breathe properly. It is not nice to have whole half hour stretches when you simply cannot stop coughing, and you end up dizzy, unable to stand, sometimes actually physically sick. It is not done deliberately. Stopping a coughing fit is an impossibility.

Fortunately, I've only had half a dozen really bad coughs in the last ten years or so (though one was by far the worst ever), but when I was a teenager, I got them a couple of times a year. Although I was a horribly well-behaved and virtuous child, I still got glared at by some teachers, who reacted as if I was choosing to cough in their lesson. Yes, I know that it's very annoying when someone else is coughing, but what was I supposed to do? The school wouldn't have wanted me to miss three weeks of school just for a cough; few schools or work places are happy accepting "cold" as a reason to stay at home. I couldn't gasp "excuse me" and walk out of the lesson, which is what I would do now at work. The rules kept me there, and I had a cough, and the rest was inavoidable.

The thing that has always annoyed me most is when people offer totally inadequate "solutions", then react badly if you reject them - as if they've offered you the magic cure and you've refused it, therefore it's all your fault. When your lungs are clogged up, a drink of water does not help in the slightest, even though it might help with a different sort of cough. When every attempt to breathe in might suddenly turn into an enormous gasping inhalation, the last thing you want in your mouth is a boiled sweet, which could choke you. When you're desperately gasping for the first proper breath you've taken in half a minute, it really, really, really doesn't help if someone suddenly thumps you on the back when you're trying to take it.

Of course I know that coughing is annoying to others, which is why I wouldn't dream of going to a concert or the cinema or anything similar when I had one. I've missed things that I really wanted to see because they coincided with a cough. I know that some people are less conscientious about this, and go to such places even when coughing all over the place. But when you've gone to a place that you have no choice about going, and are coughing through no choice of your own, I do wish that people wouldn't react as if you're doing it deliberately, and could stop at any time.

Oh, and while I'm here and ranting, can I just say how annoying I find it when I feel absolutely awful, and instead of saying anything nice, people just say angrily, "you'd better not give it to me," and then if they end up catching a cold something like three weeks later, say, "I've got your cold," even if you were actually long past your infectious period when you met them.