A sudden coughing fit that leads to temporary suffocation.

[gerrytlloyd]

A coughing fit strikes out of the blue and empties your lungs completely. You are walking along the street and, having coughed uncontrollably for a few minutes, you find that you cannot inhale again. - The lining of your airway has stuck to itself with no air in there. You feel instantly very alarmed as you "whoop" while failing to inhale. Being on a new treatment for asthma, you wonder if something has gone horribly wrong. - Is this one of those killers you hear about? - Then you remember: you have been well free of asthma for a few days on the new combination puffer and, therefore, this is something else.

You twist your body to get back out of your car (which seems too warm after the cold breeze outside) and your airway opens again, and you feel that your life is saved. The coughing continues for some time. Shaken, you go home and rest. Later, you find a forum thread that describes things well: community.tes.com/threads/d...

At least one GP says that coughing fits like this are typical for some asthma sufferers. However, no Google results for "asthma" describe the closing of the airway that you just experienced.

Pertussis can cause a blocking of the airway in adults as well as in children. A wikipedia page mentioned that pertussis reached very many people in 2012, quoting about 58,700 deaths in 2015. It's not certain that any of the people in the TES forum thread had pertussis. Either way, their comments help a lot because they confirm that suffocation occurs, and some provide practical tips should it happen again.

If something like this occurs shortly after you've started a new medication, just reassure yourself that it is not a 'typical' asthma attack and that using your asthma pump will not get your airway open again.

Re-open your airway: by twisting your body, as I did? Try raising your arms? Get somebody to slap you on the back? Take short breaths through your nose? Stifle your cough attack as much as possible to prevent all of your air from being exhaled in the first place?

Also see - cdc.gov/pertussis/about/sig...

[Azure_Sky]

I have emphysema and woke up choking two days ago. I gasped for breath and got out of bed. It hasn’t happened since.

[gerrytlloyd in reply to Azure_Sky]

Did you find that your airway closed for a while so that inhaling was impossible - that's what happens with this kind of coughing fit. It also happens with whooping cough, which kills young children because sometimes their airway closes without them coughing first, and nobody knows they have stopped breathing (- at least that's what I've read.)