Don't crack up, I've done it already

This town is sick.

Sick, I tell you; sick to death of coughing. Everywhere you go there are people hacking, wheezing and gasping like dirty old three-pack-a-day smokers.

My wife has got it, my friends have got it, my workmates have got it and, worst of all, I've got it.

OK, I take that back, worst of all my wife has got it, but I deserve sympathy too because I've had it longer than anyone else.

I've been involuntarily doing a good impersonation of someone with emphysema for two months now.

I've tried antibiotics, naturopathy, esterified vitamin C, three different kinds of cough medicine and late nights on the town, but none of them have got rid of it.

I've had a chest X-ray and had my phlegm tested by the best phlegm testers in the business yet nothing appears amiss.

My doctor tells me I've had it so long it's unlikely I'm still contagious, which is reassuring in one way but undermines my suffering in another.

I am also living in near mortal fear of having a full-on, phlegm-flying coughing fit in front of hundreds of thousands of people while presenting Lotto on live TV. Fingers crossed I make it through tonight's broadcast.

With the help of the internet, and to the amusement of others, I have diagnosed myself as having first swine flu and then whooping cough. Both diagnoses caused great anxiety and were as stressful to live with as they were wrong.

Most dramatically of all, I have cracked not one but two ribs coughing. Two weeks ago, my bark was joined by a pain in the right side of my chest. I took both of them to see my GP, who wondered aloud whether I might have fractured a rib from hacking.

Having never heard of such a thing, I dismissed the suggestion on the completely illogical grounds that it only hurt when I coughed. I knew what busted ribs felt like after a team-mate kicked me while I was on the ground at football training a few years ago, and this was different.

However, soon after seeing the doc, the pain became constant and took on a depressing familiarity.

Then, last Friday, in an explosive cough, I actually felt the second one go. There was a distinct popping sensation followed by pain. No, I'm not making this up.

It's a funny thing telling others you've cracked ribs coughing. On the one hand, it suggests you've got mighty strong lungs, but on the other, it implies you've got $2 Shop ribs.

Writer Joe Bennett, of Lyttelton, was impressed when I told him about it on Fresh FM. "My God, that's heroic. It's very manly coughing. It's top-quality manliness. You could cough for the All Blacks," he said.

In fact, thanks to my radio show, all sorts of interesting people around the country know about my cough.

Wellington cartoonist Tom Scott sounded worried but prepared when I told him. "I can't catch it down the line, can I? I'm talking to you through a hanky. Can you hear, it's muffled. I've got a hanky and I'm chewing a clove of garlic," he said.

From Auckland, Jeremy Wells suggested I try cigarettes. "You can smoke out a cold," he said.

If you think that's a worry, try coughing in earshot of Nelson Mail photographer Marion Van Dijk. The first month of my illness, she said I had better get on top of it because coughing puts a huge strain on the heart.

After a month of worrying about my heart, Marion told me that if I was still sick I probably had a really run-down immunity system, which put me at risk of catching ME. I shudder to think what's next.

Ridiculously, my cough is even starting to define me. I'm sure that to anyone who started working at the Mail over the past two months, I'm "that guy who coughs all the time".

Tragically, I was at Fresh Choice recently when I unexpectedly ran into my family. It was tragic because initially we didn't see each other, and were separated by aisles of groceries when I coughed. Our 18-month-old son immediately smiled, looked up at his mother and said: "Daddy".

- © Fairfax NZ News