Will we ever stop coughing?

I spent the greater part of three weeks coughing. Almost nonstop. I was coughing through Christmas and New Year’s, which made for a dismal holiday.

I don’t know what it was. I don’t know how I got it. But I know I don’t ever want to get it again, so hand me my KN95 mask made in China, or whatever mask I should be wearing.

There are a lot viruses floating around, from COVID to the mystery flu and those notorious RSVs, which are not to be confused with SUVs or RSVPs.

Adding to the confusion is yet another COVID omicron sub-variant that’s sweeping the Northeast — the stealthy XBB.1.5. Who came up with that name? WHO? It’s more confusing than those Apple OS versions that seem to pop up every other week.

Why can’t the World Health Organization devise something more creative so we can make sense of it, like say, Quick COVID or Sneaky COVID or COVID to Go, instead of the Greek alphabet soup they’ve been using. Whatever it is, the sub-variant accounts for more than 75 percent of the COVID-19 cases in the region, outpacing the previous strains, BQ.1 and BQ.1.1.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, my problem wasn’t COVID. My sister, who’s a pulmonologist, said it could have been any number of things; however, medical terms such as RSV, rhinovirus and adenovirus only added to my anxiety and confusion.

I suffered spasms of coughing throughout the night. My brain hurt, my neck hurt, my throat hurt, and I couldn’t swallow. I’d take a few sips of water to try to quell the coughing, but it was painful just to get it down. The only time I ever felt worse was that agonizing month I had shingles.

I tried all kinds of extra-strength treatments, from Mucinex to Robitussin to manuka honey, but nothing helped. I turned on the humidifier. I even used Vicks for the first time since I was 8, which brought back a flood of what they call involuntary memories, sort of like Marcel Proust’s madeleine cake dipped in tea.

Every day when I thought my condition might improve, it got worse. Night after night, I’d lie awake, sitting up, coughing. Just to be sure, I’ve been vaccinated and I have a card to prove it, not to mention a certificate of all my vaccinations on MyChart, which I might frame and hang next to my college diploma.

This virus started with a troubling dry cough and turned into laryngitis and then seemed to settle in my chest. The only other cough I’ve had that was this persistent was the infamous smoker’s cough I endured every morning back when I puffed two packs of Kents a day, except on the days when I smoked Marlboros. (Since then, I’ve changed my evil ways.)

The entire country is coughing. Both my grandsons, who are in first grade, have that wet cough that kids get from October to June, when there’s an unending epidemic of runny noses in the classroom, where germs that haven’t even been discovered yet get passed around like M&Ms.

My wife, too, has a bristling dry cough. My third daughter has the notorious tickle-in-your-throat cough. And my granddaughter, who lives in Palm Springs, has what I call the “California cough,” which is probably the result of all the smog and air pollution, the lack of real trees to filter the air, and those high taxes.

America has become a sickly place in the age of COVID. Everyone I talk to has a relative or friend who’s suffering from something or other and passing it along to another relative or friend.

The other day I went to church, and the place was as quiet as the night before Christmas, which surprised me because I expected to hear three times the usual amount of throat clearing, sneezing and hacking. I finally realized that a third of the congregation was either out sick or stayed home to avoid the second collection.

So all things considered, I’m wearing my mask again … although I may already be too late because I went to a funeral without it and couldn’t avoid all the hugging.

Where is our government when we actually need it? Should we bring Dr. Fauci back from retirement? On the other hand, I better be careful what I ask for because I don’t want them to respond like China’s big boss man Xi Jinping, who locked down the country, until the country got so tired of being locked down that people were rampaging through the streets in protest.

I hate to say this, but throughout this 3year ordeal since COVID was first invented or discovered or however it originated, I sometimes wonder whether anyone around the world actually knows what they’re talking about.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to order more Mucinex to prepare for the next assault. It’s going to be a long winter.