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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To be hacked off with DHs cough?

21 replies

isthishouseamidden · 22/02/2017 20:36

DH has had 'man-flu' since Friday. The rest of us had the bug last week and survived (although DS has had a perforated ear drum and conjunctivitis with his...). However DH has been driving me mad. He's been too ill to help with the kids - including visiting guests at the weekend and been off work. His temperature has been 37.9! The poor thing! This has been annoying but worst is the cough.

Every couple of minutes he barks like a truncated sea lion. It's driving me to distraction. I am a SAHM so can't escape to work. I even ended up measuring the coughing and it's around 85-90 decibels. I am very short on sympathy but trying to be reasonable and suggest practical things like lemon and honey, cough medicine etc. but I am so pissed off I can hardly stay in the same room.

I suppose IABU but it's been cathartic to rant! Here's hoping he gets his arse back to work tomorrow.

OP posts:

HelloFreedom · 22/02/2017 20:45

But a temp of 37.9 is high. Why would you want him to go back to work? He's obviously ill.

Not everyone reacts the same way to the same bug. I caught coughing lurgy from my family a few weeks ago. Only in me it triggered a respiratory tract infection, a temp of 40 and sepsis. Ended up being ambulanced to hospital.

So go easy on him. He probably feels awful.

AwaywiththePixies27 · 22/02/2017 20:51

Ooh YABU OP. I currently have this sealion virus thing and I honestly feel like death warmed up. It's literally hurting me just to swallow. I'm coughing my guts up literally, constantly, my poor neighbours have been woken up consistently the past three days by the annoying twat next door (me) who chooses to have massive coughing fits at 5am in the morning and doesn't STFU almost dying for ay least another hour afterwards (I'm asthmatic). The kids know mummy's poorly because when ever they bicker they're just getting the pleading look of "please dont make me talk because it fucking kills" of me.

A temp of 37.9 is on the warmer side.

Go easy on him.

Redsrule · 22/02/2017 20:56

My DH died suddenly of heart failure, I had moaned about his 'irritating' cough. I wish I hadn't.

AwaywiththePixies27 · 22/02/2017 20:59

RedsRule

welshmist · 22/02/2017 21:03

Well the cough is annoying in bed when you are trying to sleep I have nearly smothered my DP with a pillow, now the cough has eased up but he is snoring for Britain because he is so bunged up with the catarrh roll on spring ..... I have ear plugs in with netflix turned up just to drown him out.

AwaywiththePixies27 · 22/02/2017 21:04

HelloFreedom I hope you're much better now. My Dad just had an annoying cough too. He has COPD so didnt think anything of it. He ended up being rushed in and put on a ventilator for pneumonia and sepsis.

OP. I really really do understand how annoying it can seem. I'm even annoyed by me right now. But your DH is unwell, and you don't always need a temp to be particularly poorly.

Original poster

isthishouseamidden · 22/02/2017 21:05

So sorry Redsrule.

OP posts:

AwaywiththePixies27 · 22/02/2017 21:06

welshmint prop him up with as many pillows as you have spare. It will help him sleep easier. And cough less.

Original poster

isthishouseamidden · 22/02/2017 21:07

I appreciate your concern about serious things, but I don't think he'd be pottering to the shed and deciding to paint the fence if it was serious...

OP posts:

AwaywiththePixies27 · 22/02/2017 21:11

I appreciate your concern about serious things, but I don't think he'd be pottering to the shed and deciding to paint the fence if it was serious...

Yeah I thought that last year. I'd taken the kids to the park feeling like crap. Family nagging me to get seen by GPs. Well, I'd managed to walk to the park and back fine so it couldn't be anything serious right? I just felt a little tired.

I was rushed to resus that night.

Being able to do things doesn't mean you're not suffering, I've been able to do the school runs today, and a top up shop as single parent and needed milk. Doesn't mean I'm still not poorly.

Redsrule · 22/02/2017 21:12

My DH just went off to work the next day after driving me bonkers with his incessant cough, ironically he was a GP, next thing I knew the police and his partner were at the door to say he had died. Sounds daft but I wish I had cherished him more.

welshmist · 22/02/2017 21:35

My Mother was feeling tired I made her go to the Doctors, turned out she had silent pneumonia, so you can be really ill and still appear to keep going.

ThePinkOcelot · 22/02/2017 21:36

Redsrule
I've had this cough since beginning of December. I've been to Drs twice, but it's viral apparently. You would be sick of me!

AwaywiththePixies27 · 23/02/2017 06:21

ThePinkOcelot hope you're feeling better soon. I've been awake since 3am with it this morning. I have asthma too so when I have massive coughing fits I literally end up gasping for breath with it.

mumonashoestring · 23/02/2017 06:32

I've had mine since just before Christmas, on and off (mostly on ). Mine is viral, I just have to wait it out.

DH avoided it for ages, then finally came down with a similar cough last week and suddenly went downhill ending up with aches, chills, night sweats, vomiting - he has both viral and bacterial bronchitis and is on antibiotics. I've been sleeping on the sofa to try and get some rest, taking time off work to fit around the school runs, doing all the housework, cooking, shopping etc. The only thing keeping me sane has been having an hour or two in the evening where I can shut myself away downstairs, drink tea and watch crap telly and for the last couple of evenings DH has been getting up for an hour or two in the evening and bringing his cough downstairs to keep me company

SageYourResoluteOracle · 23/02/2017 06:48

Redsrule

Another cautionary tale:
My DH got bout number 3 of a viral thing he and I have both had (me twice) since January. I'm ashamed to say I felt he was malingering a bit. He had a barking cough.

Then the bug went and for two days he was right as rain ... until he wasn't. I had to rush him to hospital with a temperature of 40.3, slippery pulse, shivers, freezing hands: sepsis. Hooked up to a monitor, he was tachycardic, diastolic BP read at around 50, O2 was around 50. They pumped him full of antibiotics then found pneumonia, which was how the sepsis had been triggered I suppose. Had I tutted and thought 'man flu' and let him get into bed with a couple of paracetamol then he likely would've died.

And thank god I knew about the symptoms of sepsis...

It is hard when nobody's getting enough sleep and, at the moment I'm driving DH to and from the station, doing all cooking and housework (DH usually does loads) doing everything for DD and working 3 days, just so he only has to have enough energy to cope with work and do nothing else. BUT I still have him here on this earth.

AwaywiththePixies27 · 23/02/2017 06:56

Oddly enough mumonashoestring the only thing also keeping me sane is the ridiculous hours my stupid lungs wake me up. Those couple of snatched peaceful hours before all hell breaks loose when the kids wake up and I have to do the school run and everything else in between (single parent - no one else to do it for me).

I ended up in hospital so many times last year with viruses that had turned into chest infections etc so that's why I've been reluctant to go to the GPs as I don't want to be readmitted. Silly I know but my GPs are brilliant, but we've had serious issues with the hospital.

Don't use the cough medicines, most are a waste of money. A HDU nurse just told me once, just lots and lots of water. Sorry for the TMI, it helps loosen / water down the mucus on the lungs and helps you cough it up better.

AwaywiththePixies27 · 23/02/2017 07:00

sage I remember your thread. It leaves you exhausted doesn't it? My Dad had to go back to work quite quickly as he's self employed, but I've still been making him ring and check in with me to make sure he's not doing too many hours. He rang last night to tell me he thinks he's still got some of the chest infection lingering, I've threatened him with my Mum if he doesn't get back in to the doctors asap.

Original poster

isthishouseamidden · 23/02/2017 08:00

Oh dear. Now I am worried that he has gone back to work but I do think he is ok. We are both pretty sure it is just viral. My DS was admitted to hospital last year with suspected sepsis... so I hope I could tell if DH was that kind of poorly.

Your stories have given me a bit more patience though, thank you.

OP posts:

LiviaDrusillaAugusta · 23/02/2017 08:05

I had a chest infection in Aug and I still have the cough and breathlessness, it is loud enough to have been heard several floors away at work. if it irritates anyone then tough, I can assure you it's much worse from my side!

AwaywiththePixies27 · 23/02/2017 21:21

My DS was admitted to hospital last year with suspected sepsis... so I hope I could tell if DH was that kind of poorly.

You never can tell OP. Lots of patients react differently. The young lady on my ward last time I'd been admitted had pneumonia and sepsis. She'd been sent home from A&E two days prior with a "you're just being mardy - it's just the flu". Only symptom she had was a hacking cough and she had a slightly fast heart rate, nothing too concerning, at her routine obs her temp was above 40. The nurses exact words when she asked why they'd missed it was "I dont know - maybe it's because you looked okay".

I had spoken to my Dad at work literally three hours before he fell ill, he was 'normal' too apart from the persistent coughing.
When they thought I had it last year, I was in the process of being moved off the HDU ward to a different hospital, I remember the consultant coming around, me sweating from head to toe trying very hard to breathe with oxygen and him reassuring me that I just had a virus on top of everything else and it was that causing my temp to be high (bear in mind this is HDU - where this should have sent alarm bells ringing). When I eventually got transferred over to the other hospital, I was sat up and talking one minute, the next wondering why I was hot and dizzy considering I was sat down. Nurses and docs flew around my bed with iv paracetamol and iv antibiotics and taking blood cultures. Thankfully I was all fine in the end bbut there's a huge campaign at the minute about saying sepsis to the docs if you suspect it (Like sage did in a sense) . Just keep an eye on DH OP and slap him with a wet fish if he don't get himself back into the doctors if it doesn't go

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