Every year I would get this cough. Usually it would begin around Thanksgiving and it would carry on at least through the New Year. I first had it as a small child - around age 7. Sometimes it seemed like I coughed most of the year. Like a barking dog.
By the early part of the new millennium, I was living with the girls on my own in a small town near NY city. Thanksgiving rolled around and I got the cough. I usually managed to cope with it using alternative therapies but one year it was particularly bad. I felt like it was dropping down too low in my chest and I worried that I had pneumonia.
Of course I had no insurance and no doctor and also, after 9/11 caused a huge drop in my business, no money at all. A friend in England was paying my rent for a few months. Friends in NY were covering the utilities bills so we had heat. There was no child support. Living without a safety net is not an uncommon place for Americans who fall on hard times to find themselves.
The cough was so bad I had to stay in bed. I was fearful and had nowhere to turn. I started to phone people who owned a stethoscope and could listen to my chest for me. Finally I found a friend, a physician's assistant, who could do me a favor and listen to my chest. Another time a midwife who was also a friend listened for me. A third time, the girl's pediatrician agreed to have a listen when I brought one of them in.
I didn't have pneumonia but I was very debilitated. It was at this point that I found a Tibetan acupuncturist and herbalist who was amazing and agreed to treat me for hardly any money. The first season she treated me my cough was cut short by weeks; the second and third year it was cut even shorter and since that third year it has only recurred once in this chronic form and I saw an acupuncturist and it resolved.
I don't know how people with less resourceful natures and less skills in networking would go about having the outcomes I've had. That practitioner treated me for for so little because it was a professional courtesy. I was very fortunate.
If I had more money, I would go to my acupunturist every week just for maintenance! I am a total believer on what they can achieve and have seen it work, especially in the conception of my twins. Once I called her to actually cancel an appt because I had a high fever of 102, chills, sore throat...I even took my thermometer with me so I could check my temp before getting out of the car. Still 102.5. She told me to come anyway, didn't care I was sick, she would fix it. When I left her, I didn't feel sweaty or chilled AND I could actually swallow without pain. Got in the car, took my temp and it was 99. The fever never came back nor the other symptoms, I was feeling great the next day. I also had this time where I got severe infections in my lyphnodes in my arm pit. Doc would give me anitbiotics - he didn't know what it was - the sores would go away, then come back. After 2 sessions of acupuncture - gone and never came back. My lymph system was overloaded with infection and she cleared it up! I'm so glad you had the resources and the wonderful friends to help you through this difficult time.
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