That pesky ole cough

I enjoy having people over for dinner. I love spending time with friends, chatting about politics or what's going on in our lives . But I've had company for the past three weeks, and I'm ready for this visitor to move on.

This pesky guest butts into conversations, is loud and makes sleeping practically impossible. The culprit is a hacking cough, courtesy of a summer cold.

I seldom catch a cold, and when I do, it's usually gone in a couple of days. But this cough is stubborn and refused to leave when the cold fled the premises. After two weeks of almost non-stop coughing, I broke down and paid a visit to the drug store.

The cold and flu aisle designate an entire section to coughs. Is it a cough due to allergies? A cough due to colds? How about a cough due to the flu? I have a nagging cough that's due to an unwillingness to leave the building.

Not one bottle stated it was good for that kind of cough.

There's cough suppressants and expectorants, and I had no desire to start spitting in addition to the coughing. So I read the labels on the suppressants. These meds are primarily used at night, and I wasn't sure I wanted to sleep through the morning alarm, so I kept looking.

Finally, the tried-and-true methods won out, so I picked up a bottle of Robitussin as well as my mom's remedy for colds – Vicks Vapo Rub. Many a night we went bed with Vick's Vapo Rub all over our chests and a clean cloth diaper keeping the messy goop off our pajamas.

At 3 a.m., when the Robitussin wasn't doing its job and I was desperate, I fired up the computer and started searching for cough remedies on the Internet.

Home remedies came up first, and dozens of people have their own cough cure – steamy, hot showers, hot teas and adding turmeric to hot milk. I haven't a clue what turmeric is and no idea where to start looking for it in the store.

A little less confusing is the home remedy of boiling a stick of cinnamon in water and then drinking it. If that didn't work, one person suggested crushing a clove of fresh raw garlic in a small bowl and mixing that with honey followed by a chaser of butter pickles.

I think I'd rather have the cough.

The home remedy of sipping Jack Daniels every time the cough came around sounded like a sure-fire way to get stumbling drunk and then we'd probably not care if we were coughing.

One site claimed that if you cover the bottoms of your feet with Vicks Vaporub, put on thick socks and go to sleep, the cough will magically disappear. Somehow I'm just not sure how covering my feet with menthol will do something for a cough, but when that cough got me out of bed at 3 a.m., I was willing to try anything.

So I glopped on the Vicks, pulled on some thick socks, went back to bed and was up at 6 a.m., still coughing but with feet that smelled like a eucalyptus tree.

I think I'll go back to my sure-fire method for getting over a nasty cold or cough – wait it out – and see if I can find a cure for coughing that includes Blue Bell ice cream and Dove chocolates. Those might not cure the cough but that cure sounds a lot more appetizing than butter pickles and garlic.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.