My 12 year son is usually a happy, healthy, athletic, and smart young man. About 4 weeks ago he seemed to become ill with an awful cough. This cough is deep, dry, honking or barking, relentless, and to the point of him gagging at times. He is unable to go 15 seconds without a coughing attack. We are going into about the 30th straight day with this ongoing and never ending awful cough. The cough goes away during sleep, but is there for every waking moment. He coughs when he eats and it does interrupt him when trying to speak. His chest and neck x-rays are clear. He was scoped by an ENT and that seemed clear. His blood work for mono and for whooping cough came back negative. On top of that, we are in the 10th day of an added sleeping problem. This scares me more than the cough. For 10 days now, he is absolutely unable to stay alert and awake. He sleeps a full 12 hours a night or more and still is totally unable to stay awake the rest of the day for longer than 15 min. spurts at a time. In all, he sleeps about 20 hours of the 24. He even falls asleep standing up, in the middle of conversations, or sitting in a chair...then falls out but continues to not wake up. He goes directly into a REM type sleep, having very vivid dreams. At times it almost looks like his brain just shuts down. He will be asleep with his eyes open. He is often hard to wake up, and begins to cough the second he is aware and awake. Please help us... we have been to Pittsburgh Hospital E.R., our local E.R., our family dr, his dr, an allergy specialist, and no answers!!! He is unable to go to school and unable to live an enjoyable decent life at this point. We are all very worried and don’t know where to go or what to do next. So far we have tried: er – x-rays – blood work - allergy testing - breathing treatments – antibiotics - other meds – steroids - puffers Thank you, Anthony s Daddy