01848: Respiratory Distress

I've been dealing with a bit of a cough all weekend, which has been a bit of a damper for our activities. And while we still got a fair amount done, I have to admit that I've been partly doped up with over-the-counter medicines.

When you're asthmatic, it gets a little tricky trying to distinguish between a regular cough and one brought about by asthma. And with the mix of hot days and rainy nights, the constantly shifting temperature hasn't been helping me either. It also don't help even more that both conditions feel similar - the tightness in the chest and the odd bit of wheezing.

First instinct is to reach for my inhaler and take a puff, hoping for that sense of relief that one feels as the Salbutamol begins to spread throughout your system and the hand clutching you lung releases its grip. And when it doesn't quite happen and your breathing still has that slight whistling edge to it, then you figure it's probably more of a normal cough.

Of course regular cough medicine is well enough, but in practice I find it easier to fall back on the combination cough and asthma meds. It sort of helps cover all the bases, plus the fact that no cough that I ever come down with is 100% unrelated to my asthma. My weapon of choice these days is Pecof, a lovely concoction that combines 2 different types of cough medicine with a dose of Salbutamol. Good stuff.

And while one can never expect fast relief from a cough even after taking your meds, the cumulative effect that comes in time (and with following the proper dosage timing) are worth the hassle. Of course it would help if I cut down on my sugar and coffee as well, but that's just sad. But I'm trying to moderate things in order to give my system more chances to fight off this bug.

In the meantime, I just wish this darned cough would go away. Fingers crossed.

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