The Cough is back, there’s no getting around it. We could convince ourselves it was a cold or a sinus infection or something for a while, but the truth is, it’s back now, and I cannot tell you how devastated I am.

I am devastated.

And so, so, so tired.

It probably doesn’t sound like such a big deal. My kid coughs. We all cough. right? We get a tickle in our throat, or a bit of a cold. Maybe allergies.

My kid coughs.

My kid coughs every single night. She coughs twice, takes a two second rest, coughs twice, takes a two second rest, coughs twice…. This continues all night long, unless she is medicated.

She coughs whether she goes to bed sick or well. Whether she has had a cold, or not. Whether she is exhausted from a long day or has rested well throughout. She coughs when we keep her inside, she coughs if we take her outside. She coughs sleeping naked, she coughs in a blanket sleeper. She coughed breastfed, formula fed, milk fed, and soy fed. She coughs with her bed elevated or flat on her back.

She coughs.

She has coughed through a diagnosis for asthma (didn’t have it,) allergies (doesn’t have them,) and reflux (nothing there, either.)

She has coughed through countless “specialist” co-pays, innumerable x-rays, and a surgery to remove her adenoids.

She has coughed like this, every night (with a three month exception this summer,)  since she was six months old. She is now two and a half.

When she coughs, it is forceful and loud. You can hear it from every room of the house. There is no escape, there is no solution, there is only the wait. We wait until whatever drug we’re trying at the time kicks in. Most of the time, this drug is not really curing the cough. It is only drugging her to the point where she’s too sedated to continue coughing.

You could set an alarm by her cough. Exactly twenty minutes before whatever med we’re using to drug her wears off, the cough starts anew.

It starts slow. A cough-cough here. A minute later, another cough-cough. Here a cough, there a cough, everywhere a cough-cough. (Sorry. I haven’t had much sleep.) You can put a pillow over your head, your fingers in your ears, or headphones on, but you’re still going to hear that cough until she’s sedated enough to stop.

It affects her behavior during the day, and her development. In the three month reprieve that we received after her surgery, she shot up an inch and aged six months socially. She began speaking more clearly, and she wasn’t so whiney all the time. She fell down less. She was in a much better mood.

I try to remind myself that it’s just a cough. Even though it means no sleep for anyone, and it’s a problem, there are tons of families out there dealing with debillitating illnesses. Even fatal ones. Funk is not those kids.

Funk coughs.

But at 4 in the morning, relegated to the couch, with a pillow over my head, exhausted from the nightly cycle of coughing and drugging, perspective is difficult. I cry myself to sleep, angry and scared about a problem that no one really seems to think is that big of a deal but infects every single day of our family. Because every single day you see us, not one of us has slept through the night.

In two years.

I worry that she has some tumor somewhere in her brain, lungs, or throat. I worry that it really is mental, and there will never be a solution other than sedating her nightly. I worry that no one is taking it seriously but me. I worry that it will never end. I worry what it will be like to never sleep again, my newborn on one side of the bed, and my coughing preschooler on the other. I worry that our ENT’s suggestion that she’ll grow out of it, most likely by the time she is ten, is the only solution we have to hope for. That’s eight more years of coughing.

I cannot tell you how badly I need someone to figure this out. Why can’t they figure it out? It’s just a cough, right?