quit 11 wks ago but now have very dry tickly ... - Quit Support
quit 11 wks ago but now have very dry tickly cough is this normal? work in a call centre so any suggestions to alleviate would be helpful
Aup Wayne, a massive welcome to this lovely quit site, and for getting to 11 wks quit 
Erm you dont tell us much about yourself, as in are you using NRT to help you with your quit !! erm I would say drink plenty of water, or maybe get some hard boiled sweets to suck cos if you are working in a call centre, then you are erm gassing a lot 
( talking )
Usually you get a cough in the first few days of quitting, this is normal, cos its just your lungs having a clear out but can vary due to we are all different 
perhaps you have picked up a bug, cos there seems to be a lot about at the moment try some throat lozenges to suck, they may help
Speak soon, Pete
Hi Waynedavid31,
My reply to you from this morning seems to have disappeared 
Anyways... Welcome to our online stop smoking community. You've done brilliantly to reach this point. Almost a quarter of a year being smokefree
What you are feeling is pretty normal and I can imagine how it must be affecting you at work :-(. Please persevere and the cough won't last forever
Smoking paralyses the tiny hairs, or cilia, which line your windpipe and helps to clear dirt and mucus out of your lungs. When you stop smoking, the cilia start to work properly again and so you may experience more coughing and phlegm. If you can imagine all those hairs laying flat for so long and now that you've stopped they kind of say "right lads, let's get back to work again" and as they start to move it causes a dry tickle... This is a positive sign of recovery, showing that your body is getting rid of the tar and toxins which smoking has left in your lungs.
These symptoms may last a while but can be soothed by drinking plenty of water or using sugar-free boiled sweets to help keep your throat moist.
Remembering that you are only coughing up what is not supposed to be there in the first place
However, if your coughing persists and you become worried, please make an appointment to see your GP
Let me know your quit date and I'll pop your name up on our 'Wall of Winners'
Keep on, keeping on
I quit smoking on the 18th October and I am also suffering with a dry thickly cough and was getting a little worried why this is happening but after reading your reply to someone else I dont feel too bad now.
i personally coughed my lungs out for a good 6 months before the cough went away. Quit in march 2013 and cough lasted till august or so. Now its gone like nothing ever happened. I would suggest HALLS drops as it has helped me immensely. So far they were the most relieving brand. (never believed in cough drops before this...)
Same for me... 10 weeks and still a dry cough, doesn't seem like it's slowing down anytime in the near future - super annoying at work. Cough drops help a LOT. I do notice that my coughing is not as bad if I get a good night's sleep, and drink lots of water during the day.
Hi Lescar88 and a big warm welcome to our quit support community Its great to hear that your 10 weeks quit already and I hope your very proud of yourself
If you need any help or want a chat or need some help, then you just come on here and fire away
Les, if you could please let us know your quit date, then we can award you with a Winners badge and add you to the Wall of Winners
See's ya soon, Pete
Hello! I quit smoking on 24th January, when a regular cold & sore throat turned into serious shortness of breath, really low blood oxygenation (for me - normally was 97 ish but droppef to 88) and a visit to A&E. I don't have a diagnosis yet but it's not cancer or pulmonary embolism. Could be asthma or emphysema or bronchitis or nothing at all.
Anyway, since stopping smoking I've had two week-long courses of prednisone (steroid tablets), two week-long courses of antibiotics, a blue salbutamol inhaler and, not on prescription, nicorette quickmist, plus the worst wheeze and cough I have ever had in my 50 years.
The cough sometimes comes on when my airways feel constricted and at those times, the inhaler definitely works, stopping the wheeze and cough at the same time. At other times the cough is just "there", like now. It's 08.15 and I've just had about 2 hours sleep because of coughing. No amount of medication had any effect last night. The cough is barely "productive" and when it keeps going it's like my throat is turning inside out. I counteract the gagging sensation with an involuntary roar! Sound funny on here but not to my sleeping family members.
I found this thread because I am just hoping against all hopes that this relentless cough, 6 1/2 weeks after stopping smoking, could be considered normal for an ex-smoker's cough. I don't have any associated physical symptoms like fever...
DD
Hello and congrats on 6 weeks DesperateDad!!!!!
Im sorry, I cannot give you much advice on your coughing as I have not experienced that but I know members here will be more than happy to share what they are experiencing with you..........you`re doing awesome.......you are doing the right thing by quitting and hopefully as your body heals, your cough will go away
Hope your day is a good one
Hi Desperate_Dad, a big warm welcome to our lovely quit support community and a massive WELL DONE to you for reaching 6 weeks quit
DD, I wouldnt say it was normal, BUT, quite a few of our members have had the same symptoms as you. Our bodies are all made different and therefore we have different symptoms when we quit
Like Emjay says above, its the cilia thats probably causing the trouble drink plenty of water and perhaps suck some hard boiled sweets hopefully it wont last much longer
Take care now Pete
Good morning to you Pete...........I would emoticon you a coffee but I`m on my desktop. I can`t open up the site on my ipad for some reason.....ya isn`t it the truth..............we all are so different when we give up the cigarettes............some people breeze through it and some of us go through hell to get better.........
Gotta luv ya
Arizona xxxxx
Hi Desperate Dad and welcome to quit support😊
Well done on 6 weeks quit and although it doesn't seem like it right now, you are doing the very best thing for your health. Sometimes it seems we are worse off but it's your body healing☹️ I recomend Fishermans friend to suck and hot water with lemon and honey in to sip. Hope you feel better soon😊
Thanks Arizonasands, Monky and Briarwood,
I hope you don't mind if I pour out some thoughts here. I don't have another outlet for this. Doing it will help me, and it might help someone else too, so here goes.
The funny thing about stopping is that I have wanted to do it for years, and yet the psychology of the whole thing would not let me. It was like smoking, my right to smoke, was a part of my identity that I did not want to give up. I did stop in June 2014, when I deliberately went straight from smoking to vaping. That was going fine until, after about 6 weeks, I developed the 2nd worst cough in my life, which was instantly triggered by inhaling PG vapour. I tried changing to VG but still coughed, and simplistically thought "where am I going to get my fix?" and bought a pack of cigarettes. It was going to be just one a day, but as a vaper, I was still thinking like a smoker. That one a day was about ten on the first day, and soon turned into 20, and so it continued. I stopped caring about stopping although there was always a little voice inside me telling me I really should, and I ignored it. I occasionally tried vaping but the instant the vapour hit the back of my throat, I began coughing, like you might if you were in a burning building, so it was a non-starter.
That cough, which at the time (July 2014) was the worst cough I'd ever had, and I believe it was caused by an allergy to inhaling Propylene Glycol. Really, the only stuff we should inhale is air! But since then, I noticed I would start to cough when I was exercising, especially in cold conditions. I saw a doc who prescribed a blue inhaler, and that worked. I hardly needed to use it but I got round to thinking I had given myself asthma with the vaping, whereas I could smoke tobacco with no ill effects.
Fast forward to January 2016, my health scare, opened my mind to the reality that this filthy, expensive, anti-social, smelly drug habit was the most likely reason I was spending the night in hospital with an oxygen mask and intraveinous tubes and so on and so forth. While I was in there, various doctors and nurses voiced heir theories about what might be causing my extreme shortness of breath, and none of them sounded in the least bit desirable. Consultant comes round and asks if I smoke, and for how long, and immediately decides on COPD. Not that I have had the necessary tests for that, and I'm hoping its not that, but it happens to so many smokers there's every chance of it happening to me. It's reduced lung function, it's irreversible and it's progressive.
So, this time, I did not have to even think about stopping, and it has not been hard at all. I'm also glad that my wake up call has come with an event that my being here proves was survivable. I know of others, younger than me, whose kick in the ar*e was a heart attack or a diagnosis of an incurable progressive disease. How lucky I am to have evaded that fate. I also know of others who had the presence of mind to just know that it was stupid, and who stopped for that reason alone. How stupid am I to have avoided that thought process for so long?
Now, when the only remaining smoker in our office walks in after wandering out for a tab, I can smell her. I can tell when she's walked down the corridor in the last half hour. I see my old smoke-mates (its on an industrial estate so there's a social buzz among the people who only meet in the smoking area) and I pity them - I'm so glad I have no desire to stand out there and set fire to another 40 pence, rain or shine, warm or freezing. The other thing I can see from inside the office is how often she wanders out for a smoke making all the same excuses I made to myself. From inside the room, it's already starting to look like a form of madness, the blind, unswerving obedience to the white stick god, I was suffering from it, and now I'm not!
Now, I don't have to (attempt to) hide my drug habit from my family by going out for an unnecessary drive to the shops, to give myself an opportunity to set fire to another 40p - let's make that two - and if it's raining, to glue a stream of white fagash all down the driver's side of my black car, get rainwater on the trim behind the window, stink out the inside and hope no-one sees if I drop the butt out of the window. Also, I won't have to clean the inside of the glass every few weeks to get rid of the haze.
Now, I don't have to spend £40 a week on tabs, and I have almost no reason to stop off at convenience stores.
I have two "hard" things yet to do: The first is to end this cough. I'm hoping that the now near absence of any material being coughed up means that my lungs are pretty much clear. I'm hoping that my cough reflex gets the message from down below and stops heaving my body into inescapable fits of coughing. The second thing is to wean myself of the NRT. I've decided to follow the instructions and have as much NRT as I want for 3 months, and then to cut down and cut it out.
Then... I want to get fit again, ride my bike (coast to coast?) and spend some of that money on having fun!
Thanks for the bandwidth -
DD
Thank you for this posting. I just quit too and have had a cough for 4 months that none of the doctors can explain. I feel the same about wishing I had stopped sooner. Hopefully this will go away soon. Feel better!
Awesome post Desperate Dad!!!!!!
Very inspiring.... we have a friendly quit support family here and we are here for you and each other when the road gets bumpy ..... My psychological dependence on cigarettes finally ran its course this last week .... Finally!!!!! And I'm just about 6 months quit ..... Honestly??? I never thought it would end...... I am so thankful for my online family.... They have been with me every step of the way and believe me .... I have nearly lit up many times..... Just use our mantra..... Not One Puff Ever!!!!!
1 puff = 1 pack
Stay in touch
All the best
Arizona xx
I quit on Feb 19 it's now end of May and I have been through the ringer! I smoked for 25 years a pack a day plus I smoked lots of pot. I stopped everything cold turkey after a really bad bout of bronchitis. I coughed so much duri g the bronchitis a d even afterward that it caused ulcerations on my vocal cords that I could not speak. I've been to 2 pulmonologist one said i had mild asthma another said I didn't have anything and no one could explain this ongoing cough. I can speak again but live with a cough and sore throat and can't fully heal until this cough goes away. I've been to many different doctors who can't find anything really wrong with me. I just hope and pray that this is just quitting smoking related and eventually it will go away😥
Hope it went eventually and you stuck in a there not smoking well done
Did it go away
Hi I stopped smoking 8 days ago smoked cigarettes but mostly weed. I am 58 years old quit for 7 years and then started back up, I have been coughing terribly, I just hope the cough lets up soon, my mother died at 68 of COPD. I will NEVER go back!!!! It's not worth it! It's just as hard to quit pot as cigs if not harder! Good luck and God bless!!!!
6 week clean I have constant lump in back of my throat, feel iv something there that I can not shift, had 4 docs appointments and chest X-ray ( they have told me iv a lung infection but this is not what’s coursing the lump in my throat ) I have had an other doc tell me this is what’s coursing it, an other doc tell me there’s nothing wrong I really did know wether I was coming or going, after readying this page I’m a little more happy it’s normal
