Please help me to stop coughing!

[PinkSparklyPussyCat]

I’ve got this viral thing and have felt like crap for the last week. In the last hour the cough has become something else! I can’t breathe or speak without a coughing fit and I’m coughing to the point of nearly being sick. I went to the doctors earlier on and apparent as it’s a virus I just have to wait it out but can anyone help with the cough? Thanks in advance

I’ve had a terrible cough over the last six week. Barely eating, throwing up, pains in my ribs etc. I’m a lot better now. I found ginger tea to be helpful. Ginger has an anti-inflammatory effect. I mixed it with lemon and a drop of honey. The other thing I did was breathing exercises, making sure you’re taking lots of deep breaths in and out so your tummy expands and then intervals of huffing like steaming up glasses. Ultimately it depends on what kind of cough it is but maybe worth a go.

Poor you OP! A few years ago i had a cold, that left me with the most aggravating cough, it was probably 4 months on and still coughing and coughing, long after the cold had gone…and then i caught Covid, and coughed even harder for 2 or 3 days, and the cough then disappeared overnight! I can only imagine it was the fever from Covid that finally concurred the cough. Didn’t find any otc medicines that made the slightest difference sadly. Hope you're feeling better soon.

Any kind of opiate is a cough suppressant - my late OH was on morphine just for coughing and not for pain relief.

So codeine or anything similar over the counter should help. Best to only do it at night through so you can rest as you do need to keep moving the crap up and out of your lungs during the day to help recover.

@PinkSparklyPussyCat Ok I’m a little worried but think I’m probably being ridiculous. I know my steroids make me have higher anxiety about things, but how many of these symptoms do you have:

• cough so bad you feel you’ll be sick
• sinus pressure that is really painful (almost a bad headache)
• total loss of sense of smell
• loss of most of sense of taste
• suddenly, after about a week, notice spots in your throat - sort of lesions in throat, on roof of mouth
• after a week, eyes start to make gunk and eyesight is a bit blurry - suspect I may be diagnosed with eye infection this Friday (seeing eye doctors Friday for another reason)

We have it in Switzerland and it’s spreading. It’s not quite a sinus infection, it’s not quite Covid, but it’s not quite anything else. Last night, the eye gunk started for me and now they’re a bit blurry.

I bang the same drum over and over when I read threads like this. A PP has mentioned it, but I swear by Vicks on the soles of the feet, with a pair of socks on. I always get a decent night's sleep when I use this method, coupled with a spoonful of cough medicine before bed (which may be more of a placebo, but it's a habit and I can't see it does any harm)

Thanks again everyone and I'm sorry there's so many of us suffering!

@5YearsLeft, thankfully my taste and smell seems to be back and my sinuses feel more like they do when I have a normal cold, a bit blocked but not painful like they were. I've got no spots on the roof of my mouth or my throat thankfully. I hope you get on ok on Friday.

I admit I did go back to the doctors today when my eye wasn't right. My local pharmacist never has the same person in there twice and it's very hit and miss who you see. I panicked with my eye because my Mum went blind in later life and the thought of it terrifies me. She put my mind at rest about my eye and also listened to my chest again. (I know this is MN and I now wait to be told off for wasting a GP appointment!)

Sliced onions on feet, wrap a cloth around and then socks.
Or plate with sliced onions next to bed.

Yes codiene

Also glycerin syrup really helped from chemist

I'm not a doctor, but I can offer some general advice to help alleviate your coughing:
Stay Hydrated: Drink plenty of fluids like water, herbal tea, or broth to keep your throat moist and help thin the mucus.
Use a Humidifier: Moist air can help soothe your throat and reduce coughing. Use a humidifier in your bedroom, especially while sleeping.

As people have said, honey and lemon or honey and cider vinegar topped up with boiling water.

Cocoa made with hot water (as with instant coffee) can also have a cough-suppressing effect, and doesn't have to be loaded with sugar, though a bit of milk takes the edge off the bitter flavour.

I get prescribed codeine linctus by my doctors as my cough is always dramatic. Worth asking x x

The symptoms you're experiencing sound very similar to when one of my dc had whooping cough, although you most likely don’t have WC.
We had to do all of these things together to help the coughing:
Hot bath, deep as possible. Lots and lots of steam.
As soon as you’re out of the bath keep your body warm ( warmed towels if possible) Smother your entire chest area with Vicks while you’re still warm.
Hot drink of lemon and honey in hot water or hot blackcurrant squash. Put cough medicine into the drink.
Inhale steam at every opportunity. Drink as much clear liquid as you can.
Hope you feel better soon. 💐

Weird about conjunctivitis. I saw something earlier saying that was a common symptom in bird flu!

We’re the same OP, on week 2 with the cough and can’t get it to go away.

to add insult to injury we only had Covid 5 weeks ago, just recovered then got this virus, felt so ill again and the pounding headache won’t go.

I could cry with how ill we feel.

im going to try the Vicks on feet- not heard if doing that before so hopefully it’ll help.

@5YearsLeft we have all the symptoms you describe except the eye gunk/blurry vision.

If its a dry and non-productive cough you can get cough medicine that contains an ingredient that supresses the cough reflex, dextromethorpan.

Thanks for replying. Everything else might line up with a bad case of sinusitis, but the lesions in the mouth and throat are really, really rare with sinus infections. I have a disease that causes lesions, but these look way too small to be that. I have to call my GP here every time I have new symptoms, because I’m really vulnerable, so I’ll let you know if he confirms this is what everyone has or just an outlier.

@5YearsLeft sorry to hear that, hopefully you’ll recover soon, half the battle is figuring out what illness we have to get the right medication.

I used to get tonsillitis a lot so used to throat pain but this is worse and the whole spots don’t look the same as tonsillitis 😞

I’m just ready to be well now!

The cough continues! Strangely it's not too bad in the morning but gets worse during the day and evening. The cold is still lingering along with the earache and conjunctivitis but I think I'm getting there although I still feel crap. I live in a flat so I've apologised to the neighbours for the coughing but there's not much I can do. I remember a thread on here where the OP's neighbour was coughing and she wanted to talk to him about it and it made me paranoid!

Unfortunately DH also has is but his has gone straight to being a cough and cold. We're supposed to be going on holiday tomorrow but have decided to go Sunday instead so we can pack slowly tomorrow. I don't think it'll be the holiday we had planned but hopefully some sea air will sort us out!