Medical Mysteries: Her maddening cough had an unexpected cause

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Last edited Sun Feb 23, 2025, 12:35 AM - Edit history (1)

For more than a year, coughing disrupted a violin teacher’s life and sleep.
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https://archive.ph/12ewE

"For more than a year, it had been the soundtrack of her life, disrupting the violin lessons she was giving, waking her up at night and irritating family and friends who were baffled by its imperviousness to multiple treatments.

“That cough’s going to give me a heart attack!” quipped one father, a doctor who had accompanied his young son to a lesson.

Meyer’s own doctors couldn’t agree on a cause. One attributed her chronic cough to asthma. Another implicated her age, then 71. A third blamed acid reflux.

It wasn’t until the mother of a new student delved more deeply into her symptoms and medical history that the cause was unmasked — intervention that may have saved Meyer’s life..."