OK if you're happy to talk about acne what about a bloody cough

[merv]

OK thanks everyone, the one comfort of course is hot food and you know what that does for your weight. Cold food aint so bad either, so besides my brandies and starters before dinner, my dinner, my waffles and icecream with whipped cream and passionfruit sauce, berocca and then coffee and chocolates I guess there isn't much else for it but to go to bed feeling full and just wait until the damn virus gets beaten. You reckon a flu injection would have prevented this coz the funny thing is it doesn't have the flu symptoms? - no aching muscles or anything, just a pain from the neck up. Maybe its too much KB and not enough riding.

[klingon]

Dr klingon prescribes:

1) Lay off the dairy products! Sorry, but they can really mess up your system with a cough. No more icecream for you young man

2) Boost your immune system: Vitamin C, zinc, echinacea. mmmm! I have something called "Fortacold herbal elixir" by Comvita. Very yummy with hot water as one of those hot teddy options

3) Take care with cough syrup. You can get suppressants (for irritating dry coughs) and expectorants (to break up phlegm and help you cough it up... eeewww!) Make sure you use the right one for the kind of cough you have.

4) Probably the most important of all... REST. Sounds to me like you might have been overdoing it a little. Keep warm, lotsa sleep, and call me in the morning.

Get well soon.

[klingon]

By the way (just re-read your first post)...

...go see my doc - he reckons "oh you must have got a secondary infection, here's some penicillin for it". Well a week later the antibiotics are finished and I'm still crook. ...

I hope your doc did a swab and actually tested for a bacterial infection rather than just fobbing you off with antibiotics?

You might need to take some pro-biotics now to reintroduce all the good bacteria in your system that have been indiscriminately massacred by the anti-biotics. (Tablets are available from health food stores or you could try the cultured yoghurts... but then you're back with the dairy issue again.)

Also I forgot to mention Manuka Honey and Propolis. At the minimum they are very soothing, and at best they may help as part of a cure. They also taste good. Propolis is available as lozenges and also in the herbal elixir I mentioned earlier.

[janno]

+1 on all the above, Klingon!

The best way to keep a cough going is to try and fight your way through it, imho. So you need to rest. Though I realise you can only take so much time off work. . .

Gotta get the immune system up, and yeah, dairy products produce mucus if that is one of your problems. That's why top opera singers often don't eat dairy products at all, apparently. Interferes with the ole pipes.

I don't touch any cough suppressants or meds, as they interfere with the crap I have to take daily. All the old fashioned wives tale type remedies still seem to help though, like breathing in steam from a blob of vicks melted in a bowl of boiling water, etc.

Hope you're better soon, sounds like a right PITA.

[magicfairy]

It may be what ails you won't be shifted by penicillin. Without a sputum sample and culture to see what, if anything is growing in your lungs, the penicillin may have just killed off some of the bacteria - leaving the resistant ones to grow.

Agree with everyone who says rest, eat well etc, give your body the best chance to fight it. But without doing a culture it was your doctors best guess as to what was wrong and how to fix it, you really need to go back and point out you are still sick. And the penicillin hasn't helped.

You might have some other type of bacterial infection, low grade that needs treating (or none at all, it may be viral or even fungal). And your lungs may be getting damaged from the inflammation. Only X-rays can reveal that.

[ManDownUnder]

ummm LOL.... a cough thread... hoookay.

Can I start one about the scratch the cat gave me too? I woke with a sore thumb this morning, not sure how that happened... oh oh oh and I have a bit of a head cold (Nurofen really helps with that one).

Am I the only one NOT taking this seriously?

[Hitcher]

It may be what ales you won't be shifted by penicillin.

What, another beer thread? (one suspects you meant ails)