A Cure for Chronic Coughing

My 4-year-old son developed a cough a few days ago that just wouldn't go away, no matter what we tried. We gave him honey and lemon in warm water, Robitussin CF, Benadryl (we thought his cough might be allergy-related) and even used a nebulizer, dispensing the drug Albuterol Sulfate, which helps open breathing passages. Nothing worked.

The cough got so bad that night before last my son didn't sleep a wink.

We took him to the doctor and were frustrated to find that there was nothing else the physician could recommend other than what we had already used: Robitussin CF and nebulizer-dispensed Albuterol. (Although he did suggest we run a humidifier, have our son breathe simple steam generated by the nebulizer and stop feeding him dairy products).

"Call me if he gets any worse," he told us.

My son's condition did get worse. His face became puffy and, by the end of the day, he developed a fever. Furious with the uselessness of modern medicine, I was ready to take my boy to the emergency room rather than see him (and us) suffer through another sleepless night. (We've eradicated diseases like polio, can map the human body in 3D and technicolor using MRIs, and yet we can't cure a simple cough?!)

We made a final, frantic call to the pediatrician and he suggested we use Mucinex Cough For Kids. To make a long story short, this medicine, when used in conjunction with a fever reducer and Albuterol dispensed via the nebulizer (and the constantly running humidifier), seems to have worked. At 2 a.m. this morning - after 3 doses of the drug were administered in 4-hour intervals - my son stopped coughing and finally fell asleep. His cough seems to have gone away (he hasn't coughed once since, and it's after 11 a.m.).

Interestingly, Mucinex Cough For Kids has two of the same ingredients as Robitussin CF, so you'd think CF should have worked. My wife, a Ph.D. chemist who works in the pharmaceutical industry, says the difference was probably in the formulation. Sometimes medicines with the same ingredients work differently because of the way they're formulated. (This helps explain why generic drugs don't always work as well as their brand-name counterparts.)

Robitussin CF contains the following ingredients (per 5 mL tsp): Guaifenesin (100 mg), Dextromethorphan (10 mg) and Phenylephrine HCI (5 mg). Mucinex Cough For Kids contains two of the same ingredients (also per 5 mL tsp): Guaifenesin (100 mg) and Dextromethorphan (5 mg).

Mucinex also has an adult-strength version of its cough medicine, called Mucinex DM. I have not used this drug and therefore can't vouch for its effectiveness.