On friday an associate and myself had to go to one of our clients places of business and, as representatives of our client, inform the regional vice president that he was being relieved of his position (aka fired) and that he was to clear out his belongings and vacate the building. My company provides professional solutions for large corporations, and, well, sometimes head chopping is the solution. Needless to say, this task can be an uncomfortable one to perform, but my co-workers reaction was very strange. On our way over to the place he started coughing very hard and somewhat uncontrolable. His face turned red and everything. I asked him if he was going to be okay and he replied that it was just a “STRESS COUGH”. What the hell is a stress cough?
He told me that when he is stressed out he coughs for a while. He said his doctor told him it was known as “STRESS COUGH”
Is this for real? Needless to say, I’d not done much work with this guy in the past, so I was unaware his m.o. , and I know I won’t be taking him on any stressfull assignments ever again, but come on! Is there really such a thing as a stress cough? Is this some new yuppie disease I haven’t heard of yet?
Well, we have a friend who, when stressed, develops a constant throat-clearing sort of cough. He’s not doubled over coughing hard, just doing a lot of “ahem”-ing. I suspect it has something to do with tension in the throat muscles affecting his normal breathing and swallowing habits, perhaps causing a build up of mucus in the throat.
Personally, when I get stressed, my eyelids twitch. So I suppose anything is possible.
Sometimes an athsma attack starts out abruptly, with lots of violent coughing. I’ve had that happen to me when I’m EXTREMELY stressed. Could he possibly have athsma, I wonder?
The former football coach of Auburn University, Pat Dye, used to develop a cough during football season. It always cropped up toward the end of the season, which he called “Amen Corner” – a four-week period that included games against Florida, Georgia and Alabama. It was definitely stress-related, but he had an underlying medical condition that caused it (I forget what, exactly). Seems like after he retired from coaching, he underwent surgery and had his condition corrected.
I have a chronic cough that seems to be worse when I’m under a lot of stress. It’s like robinh descibes: Mostly like clearing my throught, but louder. It’s not uncontrollable spasms of coughing like in the OP, it’s just that I’m uncomfortable if I don’t.
What the hell is a stress cough?