UNTREATABLE.COM
Patient coughs once in a coffee shop and then explains — unprompted, to a stranger in line — exactly which virus it is, which nephew gave it to them, what the nephew's pediatrician said, and the projected recovery timeline. The stranger did not ask. The stranger ordered decaf.
Chronic. The backstory adds a character with every retelling.
Nodding does not end the narrative. Walking away does not either.
Patients with Terminal Over-Sharing Cough typically present with some or all of the following:
Terminal Over-Sharing Cough belongs to the Institute's growing taxonomy of behaviors that real medicine has declined to name. It exists, roughly, at the intersection of internet culture, interpersonal friction, and whatever is happening in the lives of our patients. It is fictional and it is everywhere.
Under its Latin label Tussis narrativa perpetua, the condition appears only in the Institute's own catalog. Real clinicians do not recognize the term. They recognize the behavior.
Think you have it? Find out what else you might be suffering from at the diagnosis generator. Or browse the full index of afflictions.