Tracheomalacia

I know, right?  Tracheomalacia is a word that makes you want to say "gesundheit," and you wouldn't be too far off.  This word of the day is brought to you by the doctor at Carolina Allergy & Asthma, and it is his diagnosis for David's chronic cough.  He's pretty confident that's the case, but went ahead and tested David for asthma and allergies just so we could rule those out, and David tested negative on both counts.  The doc advised me to Google tracheomalacia, and that there wasn't any "bad information" on it.  Okay...?  So I did, and came up with a variety of medical sites, but I think this one describes it best, in spite of all the medical terminology.  The other sites I looked at all made it sound scary, but the doc didn't seem overly concerned.

The short explanation, if I understand it correctly, is that the trachea has bands of cartilage around it to keep it rigid and prevent it from collapsing.  David's are softened, however, so whenever he gets a cough associated with a virus, such as a cold, his trachea flaps and he gets a loud, bronchial, brassy cough that hangs on for weeks and weeks after the offending virus has fled, and then just stops spontaneously.  The cough is not contagious and the condition is something he should grow out of.  

They x-rayed his chest to see if his aorta is leaning against his trachea to contribute to the collapsing.  David is excited to tell his classmates that he got an X-Ray since they always learn that word when studying the letter X.  The doc will review those images and open a dialogue with David's pediatrician to come up with a treatment plan.  That's all I've got for now, but at least I feel better that I wasn't blowing smoke as I got frustrated over the years with the pediatricians giving me a wide variety of guess-planations and ineffective treatments for what sounded to me like, and now I'm sure has been, the same cough.