The Cough

Image source

A commonly held opinion among expats in the UAE is that sicknesses here are abnormally varied and hideous. The people who live here come from all over the world, and they don't stay put. It's a very mobile society that is always going to one country to visit and then coming back to work and so on. Thus, the sicknesses that get passed around also come from all over the world, and are also very mobile. We get the best, strongest, most virulent strains of the cold and flu you could imagine. It's even worse than Egypt.

The latest sickness to rear its head I have dubbed simply, The Cough. There's not a large runny nose component, not even a general feeling of malaise. It's just a cough. But oh, WHAT a cough. Both my girls have had it and it's the ghastliest thing you've ever heard. It comes from deep in the chest and it is so tight that it hurts just to listen to. No medicine can touch it. You get it, and then you suffer for the next 2-3 weeks while you wait for it to pass.

Since the powers of dextramethorphan are useless against The Cough, we've been doing a lot of the honey + lemon juice remedy (and ginger, if only Miriam could stomach it), and that thing where you put the Vick's Vapo Rub on their feet instead of their chest. That's all I've got in my arsenal. It's hard to be so helpless in the face of sickness, but that's just how colds roll in the UAE.