14Oct/092
Reflections on Being Sick
About two and a half weeks after I first reported an illness, I've just about recovered. There is the last remnant of a sore throat and a dry cough, but it will probably disappear in a few days.
It's been a painful and long illness, and I have two salient thoughts on it:
- People actually want to avoid you. This is somewhat obvious and logical, but it actually made me feel alienated. I would quarantine myself in a corner of the classroom, but other times students would purposefully avoid being around me. This is nothing compared to the stigma HIV/AIDS patients faced in the 1980s/90s, and I am so happy that education has changed much of that, at least in some areas. Experiencing what a patient endures can really make you a more understanding doctor.
- An itchy throat is annoying, the tiny little scratch in the back of the throat that forces you to cough but won't disappear even when you do. I was often in situations when I really did not want to cough repeatedly - in lecture or in public - and could go red in the face just trying to suppress the cough. Fun fact: this itchy sensation is caused by irritation of the mucosal membrane, often when there is insufficient mucus.
I'm glad to be somewhat healthy again, and I hope it doesn't repeat later in the winter.
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October 19th, 2009 - 23:31
Does coughing actually help when you have an itchy throat?
November 6th, 2009 - 21:41
Sometimes a good cough often helps rid the itch (just like scratching your skin). The mechanism for this has been a mystery for a while, but recent research suggests that it may be rooted in your spinal cord. Basically the itch sensation excites specific neurons, and scratching calms that excitement down.
A lay-article here: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1889750,00.html
Yet at other times scratching doesn’t rid the itch. In a rash, for instance, scratching relives it temporarily but the itch quickly returns, likely because the itch is a secondary result of inflammation in the rash irritating the nerves. It may be different in other situations – this is a complex question indeed!