"I thinking your asthma is only 50% asthma. I think it might be GERD or Allergies or..." [award pause] "a learned response. We might just need to practice breathing without coughing."

I am so insensed and yet completely defeated that I can barely hold the pieces of myself together. A learned response! Right! I am around smoke and I cough. I am in cold weather and I cough. I laugh too hard and I cough. All are CLASSIC triggers of asthma and the brochures I've been given on cough variant asthma all talk about how the attacks are difficult to understand because they start with coughing.

"How is your relationship with your mother? If it is not good, that could also be a factor." While I would love to lay this misery at her feet, even I know that would not be fair.

Seriously, I would give up my new flat-panel television if only to find a pulmonologist who will ignore the fact that I had TB (that because the favorite excuse for the coughing: "You're TB is back") and concentrate on the fact that I cannot sing, I cannot run, I cannot laugh, I cannot carry more than ten pounds, I cannot be around smoke, I cannot stand the cold, I CANNOT do so much without ending up jamming an epipen in my thigh.

ARGH!

But. But. But I will go take that nasty test for GERD and get poked for still more bloodwork so that she can rule out those suspicions of "50% other."

SIGH....