the family doc

My mom has had a chronic cough of and on for years. She typically seems to get a cold sometime throughout the winter and, although she gets over the acute illness, a dry cough lingers for months afterwards. She obviously hates it and my dad has made it clear that it drives him crazy.

Unfortunately, tax season always seems to ramp up right as the cough starts. My mom is a CPA and gets extremely busy this time of year. Things also always seem to fall apart in one way or another during this time every year. One year, my brother had appendicitis. Another year my grandma got sick. This year my grandpa Joe had a bad fall that led to his passing away in March. These months are always so busy for my mom and she doesn't have much time to get seen by a doctor.

But she went to the doctor anyway! She was so sick of coughing that she went to a few appointments. She was prescribed a couple different rounds of antibiotics, steroids, allergy medicine, and even an inhaler! Nothing seemed to help...

One day a couple weeks ago my mom asked me what specialist she should go to for her cough once April 15 passed by. She told me she was planning to make an appointment with an ENT, a pulmonologist, and an allergist. Holy cow - that seemed excessive but apparently she wanted to get to the root of the problem. This cough was driving her nuts! I felt sort of guilty that, here I was, almost an MD and I hadn't even thought about how much it was affecting her.

She had already been prescribed good antibiotics and due to the length of the problem it seemed unlikely she had an ongoing infection (unless it's fungal or something really weird, which is unlikely). My first guess after a URI was allergies/asthma. She does seem to have reactive airways that are worst in the wintertime. She has never been diagnosed with asthma but it runs in the family so it could be a cause. However, the steroids should have helped with that and the inhaler would have made a dramatic difference.

What else could cause a chronic, dry cough? The only thing I could think of was GERD. My mom has no history of heartburn, doesn't ever notice a sour taste in her mouth, and is completely healthy other than this cough. When I suggested this diagnosis to her, she was skeptical. I actually did an UptoDate search and found out that up to 30% of people with chronic cough because of GERD actually have no other symptoms!

Either way, she had no other options until she could get in to see a specialist, so that night my dad sent us off to the store to get some prilosec. I was really hoping that it would work, not only for my mom's cough to get better, but just to prove that my medical education was worth it - I actually learned something!

After about a week and a half of taking the prilosec, my mom told me that she was not coughing nearly as much - almost not at all! It's been well over two weeks now and she seems about back to normal.

I'm so glad my mom feels better. I'm also glad that I apparently learned something these past four years! Hooray for being a doctor!