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You’re having non-medical people diagnose you over the internet??
Unfortunately, it can take up to several weeks for your lungs to get back to ‘normal’ after a bout with Bronchitis. If there’s no wheezing then why assume asthma?
Give it a few more weeks, and don’t jump to conclusions just yet.
It’s too early to tell – sorry, I know it seems a long while!
Possibilities are:
1. It was a virus all along (even pneumonia can be viral). If it was a virus medicines such as antibiotics won’t work and you just have to wait for your body’s own immune system to conquer it and ease the symptoms with over-the-counter medicines and steam. If it’s a bad infection the cough can last for weeks after that’s happened, although you should then be feeling better apart from the cough (eg no more aches and pains all over, temperature back to normal etc).
2. You got a 2ndary bacterial infection, but the antibiotics the doctor gave you weren’t the right ones to kill that particular bug, so you might needed a different antibiotic to follow – that happened to me a few years ago. The only way doctors know for sure which bug you’ve got is to take a swab from you and get it tested, but that would delay treatment, so they usually start with an antibiotic that kills a lot of bugs and then try another one if that doesn’t work.
Once again, a bad cough can still last for weeks after the infection. My husband had a nasty viral infection followed by a 2ndary bacterial one earlier this year, and when the doctor examined his chest towards the end of the antibiotic course he said it was clearing OK but the cough would probably last for 6 weeks – in fact his cough lasted for 8 weeks.
The chest tightness could be because you’ve still got something in your chest, or it could just be the reaction of the muscles to the constant coughing. Your doctor’s probably fairly sure from listening to your chest, but my doctor sent me for a precautionary X-ray (which was clear) to rule out anything more serious when mine was taking some time to get better.
3. It could be asthma, but it’s too early to rule out the other possibilities yet. Your doctor could try giving you a peak flow test but you’d probably just start coughing when you breathe in to do it!
I couldn’t stop coughing for a year after my bad infections a few years ago, and it was eventually diagnosed as asthma. Once the cough was still as bad (and tiring) when I’d been feeling otherwise better in myself for a while, the doctor started to take it more seriously and tried various treatments including a cure for the constantly runny nose and post-nasal drip I’d had for years – this helped the cough but didn’t stop it. My doctor didn’t consider asthma because I wasn’t really wheezing or anything by then – just had a cough that wouldn’t stop whenever anything irritated my throat (even a biscuit crumb!) Eventually he sent me to a specialist who suggested asthma (or gastric reflux), and the asthma treatment completely sorted out my cough, although it took time.
I recently read (can’t remember where) of a hypersensitive throat syndrome that can develop after an infection, and I wonder whether that’s what I actually had, but the treatment seems to be the same – a steroid inhaler to calm the inflammation & sensitivity and a reliever inhaler for symptomatic relief.
You could try asking your doctor whether she thinks it would do any harm to try the asthma inhalers to see if they help – I was actually first put onto them when I caught another infection shortly after my doctor received the specialist’s report, and they certainly helped.
August 27th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Gregory Hedges
You’re having non-medical people diagnose you over the internet??
Unfortunately, it can take up to several weeks for your lungs to get back to ‘normal’ after a bout with Bronchitis. If there’s no wheezing then why assume asthma?
Give it a few more weeks, and don’t jump to conclusions just yet.
August 31st, 2008 at 1:00 am
Vivian Allgood
It’s too early to tell – sorry, I know it seems a long while!
Possibilities are:
1. It was a virus all along (even pneumonia can be viral). If it was a virus medicines such as antibiotics won’t work and you just have to wait for your body’s own immune system to conquer it and ease the symptoms with over-the-counter medicines and steam. If it’s a bad infection the cough can last for weeks after that’s happened, although you should then be feeling better apart from the cough (eg no more aches and pains all over, temperature back to normal etc).
2. You got a 2ndary bacterial infection, but the antibiotics the doctor gave you weren’t the right ones to kill that particular bug, so you might needed a different antibiotic to follow – that happened to me a few years ago. The only way doctors know for sure which bug you’ve got is to take a swab from you and get it tested, but that would delay treatment, so they usually start with an antibiotic that kills a lot of bugs and then try another one if that doesn’t work.
Once again, a bad cough can still last for weeks after the infection. My husband had a nasty viral infection followed by a 2ndary bacterial one earlier this year, and when the doctor examined his chest towards the end of the antibiotic course he said it was clearing OK but the cough would probably last for 6 weeks – in fact his cough lasted for 8 weeks.
The chest tightness could be because you’ve still got something in your chest, or it could just be the reaction of the muscles to the constant coughing. Your doctor’s probably fairly sure from listening to your chest, but my doctor sent me for a precautionary X-ray (which was clear) to rule out anything more serious when mine was taking some time to get better.
3. It could be asthma, but it’s too early to rule out the other possibilities yet. Your doctor could try giving you a peak flow test but you’d probably just start coughing when you breathe in to do it!
I couldn’t stop coughing for a year after my bad infections a few years ago, and it was eventually diagnosed as asthma. Once the cough was still as bad (and tiring) when I’d been feeling otherwise better in myself for a while, the doctor started to take it more seriously and tried various treatments including a cure for the constantly runny nose and post-nasal drip I’d had for years – this helped the cough but didn’t stop it. My doctor didn’t consider asthma because I wasn’t really wheezing or anything by then – just had a cough that wouldn’t stop whenever anything irritated my throat (even a biscuit crumb!) Eventually he sent me to a specialist who suggested asthma (or gastric reflux), and the asthma treatment completely sorted out my cough, although it took time.
I recently read (can’t remember where) of a hypersensitive throat syndrome that can develop after an infection, and I wonder whether that’s what I actually had, but the treatment seems to be the same – a steroid inhaler to calm the inflammation & sensitivity and a reliever inhaler for symptomatic relief.
You could try asking your doctor whether she thinks it would do any harm to try the asthma inhalers to see if they help – I was actually first put onto them when I caught another infection shortly after my doctor received the specialist’s report, and they certainly helped.