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January of 2024 after nearly four years of dodging the virus I finally contracted COVID. Because I take medication that tunes down my immune system response as a treatment for psoriatic arthritis my doctor proscribed the Paxlovid therapy to keep the COVID from becoming very serious.

That worked wonders. My run with this disease, which killed a good friend of mine nearly four years earlier, was quite mild, hardly more than an intense cold.

After the disease ran its course however I discovered I have a fast new friend, a persistent cough. At first, I simply waited for the damaged tissue in the airways to recover and the cough to leave me.

That did not happen.

The tissues recovered but the cough persisted. Treatment after treatment was tried and none managed to dispel the cough from my system. I didn’t cough all the time, most of the time it simply wasn’t there, but prolonged talking, like running a tabletop game, always brought it out. Eventually I learned to just live with and try to avoid irritations that provoked such spasms.

Last month while researching at the City Library I discovered that strong aftershaves and perfumes provoked an intense irritation. After the three hours in the presence of those scents I wound up coughing for 12 hours.

Yesterday I got another lesson in airborne irritants. Heating my lunch in our tiny breakroom a new employee to the building came in with a modestly strong perfume. My exposure lasted only six or seven minutes but something in this scent proved terribly adapt at irritating my airway.

Soon I was coughing nearly uncontrollably and after nearly two hours threw in the towel and went home. The air at home is free of all perfumes and after another six and a half hours I finally felt my airways open up again.

This is long COVID, a persistent effect from my infection but I know people who suffer it far more intensely than myself. Brain fogs that make thinking difficult, exhaustion that make everyday activities nearly impossible. While this cough is troublesome and curtails some aspects of my life, I know that all in all it could have been far far worse.