Chesty cough/cold; supress or let it carry out it's course?

missbiggles1

Do you smoke?

Armchair23

The usual gentle reminder that we shouldn't offer medical advice here.
Please go back to your GP or see if there's a walk in clinic nearby where you could get another opinion.

Neti pots, plenty of fluids and steam inhalations might help but you need medical advice if you're (quite sensibly) worried.

Hope it goes well for you.

Tolteca87

I had this for years. Then I was introduced to Day Nurse which worked, suppressed the cough and stopped the cycle developing into months of misery.

jenniewb

missbiggles1 wrote: »

Do you smoke?

Nope, never have never will

Armchair23 wrote: »

The usual gentle reminder that we shouldn't offer medical advice here.
Please go back to your GP or see if there's a walk in clinic nearby where you could get another opinion.

Neti pots, plenty of fluids and steam inhalations might help but you need medical advice if you're (quite sensibly) worried.

Hope it goes well for you.

I'm not worried at all- I get this every year (or have done for the last 4 years) and am now just fed up with it keeping on coming back, having seen my/a GP the last 3 times and walked away with nothing than "just rest and drink water..etc" and stuff I could have used common sense for- it felt like a waste of everyone's time least of all mine and everyone else who no doubt could have used my appointment for something with more productive use. This time of year it's ridiculously hard to get an appointment so I really resent getting to one only for it to be a waste of everyone's time.


The first year I had this, I went through 3 separate courses of antibiotics, each lasting 2 weeks before it went away. I can't help thinking if I'd left it alone it would have maybe gone away anyway. That year people at college with me also had a similar chest infection and many ended up on a drip in hospital! I did not so I count myself as lucky!

Tolteca87 wrote: »

I had this for years. Then I was introduced to Day Nurse which worked, suppressed the cough and stopped the cycle developing into months of misery.

Thanks- I have this already.


My question wasn't so much what to take or what to do as I know nothing can be done. My question is weather or not I leave it alone and let it run it's course.


I was just wondering if anyone else had done anything similar (not taken anything with a chesty cough and yes I am bringing up stuff- sorry if that's a bit tmi...!) In the past, remedies seemed to have done little to speed things up I thought, so I am wondering if I just leave it alone, save myself ££s and save my liver the effort of getting rid of the medication, if it will just heal itself.


The way I see it; colds are a virus. They are inside our bodies and our bodies want to expel them and they do this via bodily fluids (coughing, sneezing, runny eyes, nose...etc). If we supress the symptoms with medication, are we not just making it harder for our bodies to expel the virus and so prolonging the agony?


Or is it better to prevent our body becoming weaker through all the effort of expelling the virus (explained above) and so harder to get back to health?


I should add here; my body is a bit immune-impaired as I have an underlying illness. (My GP knows this and nothing can be done) hence possibly why things like this do take as long as they do to go through me. Having said that; I could do without the medicine costs if they really are not going to help me in the long term. Besides paracetamol and the odd addition of codine, there is really very little else in them I have thought- is there really any point in it if there is really no actual cure for the common cold anyway?

belfastgirl23

To be honest if you've had it for four years on the trot and it's debilitating enough to affect other areas of your life (eg exercise) I think you need to get much more proactive about this - which is probably kind of what you are thinking yourself since you posted here. It is true that GPs tend to fob off on things that aren't immediately life threatening. I'm not much of a one for exaggerating but I think if it recurs you need to get back to the GP asap, tell them you can't breathe and can't exercise and insist that you're referred. It is not reasonable to expect you to just put up with this. You need to get cross about it IMHO. Do they want to wait til you develop something terrible to treat it?

I don't think this is a DIY issue, you've tried DIY solutions and they haven't worked. It's time to make a push I'd say.

edited to say - my usual rule of thumb is that a productive cough (with mucus) shouldn't be suppressed whilst a dry tickly cough can be.

peachyprice

If it's coming back the same time every year for the last 4 years have you considered it might be allergy related? 'Hayfever' isn't just confined to the summer months.

missbiggles1

If you have a lot of mucus, you want to bring it up not suppress the cough, so I'd use a good expectorant cough mixture.

peachyprice

And good old friars balsam vapour