Cough Variant Asthma - not alone..........

[yaf_user681_6914]

Hello, I am new to this website and forum, but so glad I found it!

I was diagnosed with cough variant asthma some 11 years ago (39 now) and was never quite convinced that any of the dr's I was seeing were at all sure what to do with someone who wasn't wheezing.

I now have a veritable pharmacy in my bedroom - ventolin, cetirizine, lanzoprazole and singulair but am coughing constantly - very fed up with the lack of sleep and coughing so hard I am sick sometimes. The thing that used to work well for me was a steroid nasal spray which stopped post nasal drip, but I had awful nose bleeds and susequently discovered a small hole in the middle part of ny nose where the flesh has been eroded (yes, v yuk). The consultant claimed this was not related, but quite how it can have happened on it's own and by pure co-incidence I can't see.

I was chatting to a pharmacist in the States last week, and was telling him about it - he was telling me about a couple of things they use there which I am going to ask my GP about. One is an anti tussive suspension cough medicine called Tussinc which calms the cough reflex (short term use only apparently), and a new inhaled steroid called Flovent. I struggle with any inhalers as they make me cough my head off (!!) but he said it's more common in the States to use a nebuliser to take them when that's the case - never been given that option by my GP although I did buy a nebuliser on-line when I was pregnant as we live quite far from a hospital.

He also said it was worth trying nasalcrom (UK equivalent is rhinocrom) which works as an anti allergy nasal spray but doesn't have the nasty side effects I got last time.

Anyway - might be worth a try so watch this space.....................

i feel better just for having let off steam!

Anyone else out there with CVA and tips as to what works?

Kind regards

Lisa

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coughing is one of symptoms of an attack for me, but i dont have cough variant asthma...

i cough like crazy during some of my attacks that the pain exhausts me if the effort of breathing itself doesnt... and then if i get a chest infection, which i am currently getting over, again cough cough cough...

what i find useful, is sitting over a bowl of hot water with a towel over my head and breathing in the steam, or sitting/ lying in a room with a bowl of water on top of the heater ? you tried this ?

no tips on the nose bleeding + erosion sorry, however during my last admission to hdu last week i had a nosebleed which seemed took like forever to stop!! they said it maybe the amount of nebs i had had i.e. amount of oxygen and cos i had 4l/min oxygen blasting through my nose through nasal cannula at the time!! vaseline helped to soothe it afterwards... any good ?

hope u aint suffering long :S

x x