Saw the doctor yesterday because that cough was still lingering. It was waking me up a few times during the night. Occasionally I’ve been coughing so much it’s been degenerating into revolting-sounding retchings. (Poor M has had to put up with many of these sorts of coughs over the last few weeks. They feel delightful, too.)
Anyway, the doc said that I have a “post-infectious cough, if you need a name for it”, and after listening to my chest and various breaths (“breathe out through your mouth, okay, now breathe in and breathe out forcefully, through your mouth, right now do that again but breathe out through your nose, good!”) prescribed some cough suppressant and antibiotics. The cough suppressant has stopped me coughing. Really truly completely. This codeine linctus is strong stuff. I haven’t coughed once since taking my first dose at around 6:45pm yesterday.
It feels a bit strange, partly because I have been coughing for about a month now, and partly because I still feel really vaguely like there’s a cough in there, waiting for a moment when I’m not looking, to leap out again and splutter all over the keyboard.
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I was prescribed codeine linctus a few times. Then I changed doctors and my new doc was horrified “first, you’re asthmatic, second, you’ve got to stop taking the codeine – you’ve got bronchitis and you have to get that stuff out of your lungs” (yes, ewwwwwww)
I got chronic bronchitis four times in one year. Very nasty. I know exactly how you feel. Coughing so much is really tiring.
I have had the same sounding, tasting, feeling type of cough before, and my doctor also said it was “post-infectious” or “post-viral”. He told me that lots of people who travel in Asia get it, I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but it sounded plausible. I’d had it (in varying degrees of yuckiness) for about eight months before going to get it checked.
He prescribed me some full-on drug (after checking that I was not an elite athlete, how thoughtful) and the thing went away. But I used to like to be able to whip out the cough to get a little sympathy every now and then…
Yep, it’s exhausting, Fiona. The codeine linctus has done the trick, though. No more coughing. My doctor was more careful – he did check that I’m not asthmatic before prescribing the stuff!
Anna I wonder where I got it – I took it to Malaysia with me! I don’t know about getting sympathy with my version, I think M’s been more revolted by it than anything (the retching – eeewwwww)…