I didn't exactly choose this, but it's all right. A bit too dogged and swottish, sometimes, though.(And I have a lot of things I missed that I wish I could make up for.)

I'm at my wits end.

The last dose of the tessalon perles I took stopped working. i'm supposed to take them every 6 hours and I didn't write down when I took them but it was between 2 and 3 pm EST. I've been coughing and I kept trying to tell myself I should just see if I stop coughing without taking any medicine. Plus I was trying to see if it was safe to take the cough syrup.

I tried not coughing. I mean my throat will bother me and I'll start coughing and I'll try and stop before it gets so out of hand. I've started thinking maybe i'm doing this to myself and maybe I want to be sick.

I've been drinking water, i have the humidifier and vaporizer going to try and raise the humidity in the house.I'm not coughing up mucus. I have congestion and but that's all clear. No real fever. I don't know what this is. And I want a doctor to defintively say "oh you have X and you'll need to do X,Y, and Z" . Not, well it seems you have a virus blah blah , here's something if you are still having problems in 2-3 days come back.

Because that's not working. I'm at my wits end. Plus I feel like I should just suck it up and go to work and deal because I don't have a fever or a "real" illness. Just a cough that makes me double over , causes a headche and makes me feel like I'm going to puke.

askye, how long has the cough lasted?

askye, do cough drops help at all in between the perles? I'm sorry you're still feeling so awful.

Hil, I had the cough last week. It started last Sunday I think. It went away Friday but that night or yesterday morning. I went back to the doctor yesterday and they gave me the Tessalon perles.

sj - I'm honestly afraid to use cough drops when I start coughing because I'm worried I'm going to accidentally inhale it or choke on it or something. The fear might be unfounded, but it freaks me out. I use them to help soothe my throat once the coughing is controlled.

Well, it looks like TCG once again has a three day weekend. His office is closed again tomorrow.

Is it just coughing all the time, or do you get fits of coughing where you can't breathe, and then no coughing for a while? (What you're describing kind of sounds like pertussis. All the usual "I am not a doctor" disclaimers, and so on. But if it could be, then you probably want to avoid being near any babies.)

Fits of coughing where I keep coughing until I gag. I tried to make myself stop tonight, but I'd suppress the cough but then it would start up again. The cough syrup seems to have kicked in. I'm still coughing some but not as violently.

I start coughing and it just keeps going I don't know how to describe it. I've coughed like this at the doctors. When I was there on the 2nd I could barely talk because it would start the coughing fits.

If you scroll down this is basically what I sound like when I'm coughing but without the whoop sound [link]

Except I got a booster of the vacciene a year or two ago.

Adults don't always get the whoop sound -- it's more common in kids, because their airways are narrower. What you're describing does sound a lot like what I had when I had pertussis. I'd say go to the doctor and specifically ask about it. If he said to come back in a few days, and you've already gone through all the medicine he gave you, then I'd say it's time to go back. The vaccine for pertussis isn't great -- it's better than nothing, but only about 70 or 80% of people who get it are fully protected. (As opposed to somewhere between 95 and 97% for the measles vaccine.) It could be something else, but whatever it is, if you're that miserable, let the doctor know.