It all began with a case of Laryngitis that could have silenced a Mack truck. I woke up one morning unable to speak above a whisper, a symptom that eventually mutated into a resemblance of a voice but definitely not mine. Elmer Fudd was apparently channeling through me from the great beyond. I found myself reduced to giggles repeating old cartoon character lines in my new voice and trying to perfect that tricky E. Fudd laugh.

I was having so much fun with it, that I almost hated to see it go, but go it did, to be replaced by some semblance of my normal voice, now punctuated by the five second cough. What is a five second cough? This is a cough that occurs every five seconds with such regularity you could set your watch by it.

And when this was not amusing enough, the cough became a repeater, which meant that it simply would not stop. It was interesting trying to communicate with normal humans while possessing this weird talent. A conversation usually didn’t last too long and was punctuated thusly:

“Hey, (cough,cough,cough,cough) what (cough,cough) are (cough) you (cough, cough, cough, cough) doing? (Coughing to infinity from that point on.) By the time I got to the question mark, the other person was cringing, covering her face, and spraying a can of disinfectant. She never heard the question, and I was not about to repeat it. Couldn’t have if I’d tried.

I tried cold remedies, cough drops, decongestants, my grandmother’s home-brewed 80 proof cough syrup that is capable of removing paint from the hood of a car, and zinc tablets. The only thing that actually had an effect on the cough was the zinc, but the cough syrup showed some promise as a potentially amusing bad habit if nothing else. But the zinc, now there was a real gem. I would place the tablet on my tongue where it would remain for the next 45 minutes or so. Sucking on zinc lozenges is simply out of the question unless you want your mouth and throat to feel like you are eating talcum powder.

During the time that the lozenge was actually in my mouth, the cough went away, and I could live something akin to a normal, albeit powdery life. As soon as it was gone however, that cough came back and with a vengeance. It got to the point where it affected my breathing. Try this: Breathe in, slowly and then breathe out again, just as slowly. How good is that? Pretty good when you can’t do it. I would breathe in a short, choppy little breath, cough, another choppy breath, another cough. Finally I just took the biggest breath I could and coughed hard enough to bring up phleghm out of somebody in China. That worked for a few seconds and then that repeater cough took hold of me again. I popped another lozenge.

The instant the lozenge hit my tongue, the cough stopped. Every single time. It never failed. It happened so often in fact, that I began to question the true origins of that cough. Was it actually located in my throat and lungs or was it simply all in my head? It got to the point where I would swallow the last of the zinc and be fine for an hour or more, right up until I remembered the cough, and then it would start back up again and I would pop another lozenge, thereby exorcising the demon cough for the time being. But no matter how many times it was removed the cough always returned to possess me again. I wondered how long it would be before Linda Blaire showed up on my doorstep with her head turned around backward.

Gradually, the zinc lozenges managed to pound back that hideous cough until it got to the point where it only returned once every few hours or so, more often if I actually remembered to remember it, at which time it would once again re-assert itself. It was the cough from hell and it had moved in to stay. It got to the point where I wondered if I would require some kind of coughers anonymous support group to get me through it. “My name is Kristie and I am addicted to phlegm.” It definitely began to look as though I would be needing some psychiatric help to get me back into the habit of normal breathing again, if such a thing still existed in my world.

As of this writing, I am still coughing occasionally, usually only when I think about it. I am no longer using the “special elixir” my grandmother brewed up so long ago, as I am afraid it will eat off my taste buds until the stuff starts to taste good, and I am actually able to carry on complete conversations now. Well, at least as well as I ever have anyway. I talk to so few people these days that I don’t think anyone even noticed the difference. So I will leave you normal, non-coughers with this profound thought…

Never forget to (cough,cough,cough,cough,cough,cough,cough,cough)

What?

Oh, never mind.