Sleeping through night cough

[WindsweptRissa]

Hi, just curious as to whether anyone else manages to do this. I’ve had asthma since a baby and since childhood I’ve been able to sleep through most coughing. My mother says that she would regularly be woken up by the sound of me coughing so much it would sound like I was choking only to go into my room to find me fast asleep. I seemed to have carried on with this ability into adulthood. I only actually wake up if I’m having a full blown coughing fit. However, although I don’t actually wake up or at least wake up enough to remember it, I know it does disturb my sleep because I find that I’m not really functioning at my best and it’s only then when I mention that to my husband that he tells me he’s not surprised because I’ve been coughing the last x number of nights. I may be able to sleep though it but it wakes my husband up and he ends up listening to music. Just wondering whether anyone else manages it. It’s not a bad skill to have but I’m never sure what to answer to the do you have a night cough question.

[Tugun]

Hi,

No snoring - just coughing! I'm lucky. I don't have the coughing problem - just the snoring!

Get your husband to record you (or video you) on your mobile when you are asleep and coughing. Make it reasonably long - not too quick. Then next time a doctor asks - play the recording. You shouldn't have much trouble with them after that.

[Minushabens]

Haha...yes I know what you mean. I'm not a great sleeper generally & it never takes much to wake me up, but it's not uncommon for my wife to complain that I've woken her up/kept her awake through coughing & wheezing when I didn't realise. On more than one occasion, I've been dispatched to the spare room as an alternative to being murdered.

[WindsweptRissa in reply to Minushabens]

I have offered to sleep on the sofa but my husband says he’d rather know I was still breathing.

[horseblister]

I have had asthma since I was 4, thats 70 years now and when I went to have my tonsils removed when I was 8 thats when I found out that I coughed in my sleep because a doctor woke my up to smack me for keeping all his patients awake! I did not get ice cream and jelly like the others just a drink of water. Now I snore in my sleep and wake up breathless so I am being tested for sleep apnea.

[WindsweptRissa in reply to horseblister]

I’m not the only one then. I remember having my tonsils out at 6. I have a tendency to take a long time to come round from a general anaesthetic so by the time I had woken up visiting hours were over so my mum had gone home. So when I woke up on my own in a completely different ward to where I had been before the operation I started to cry. I was given a stern telling off and told If I had wanted to see my mother I should have woken up earlier.

[horseblister]

Hospitals were funny places back then. The hospital I was in had one ward for women and children, it was the hospital for the local colliery. there six children having their tonsils out and the nurse took the six of us in a large laundry basket, anaesthetic was administered with a Mayo maskand cloth . We had to watch as one by one the children were put on a big wooden table and someone used a tonsil guillotine on each one. Woke up back in my cot. horrible thing is I had to walk two miles across fields with my mother to the hospital and I was left at the door. I had to walk home with my mother a week later. I have a lot of health issues and I too have anaesthetic issues, nice? to know I am not the only one.

[Lysistrata Administrator Community Ambassador]

Don't know about coughing specifically but I do have asthma issues at night that I'm not aware of at the time, only realising when the next day I feel as if I'd had about 1 hour's sleep when I was in bed 'asleep' for 7 or 8 hours.

Sometimes it gets into my dreams if especially intense and then I may wake up - will either have realistic dreams about going to hospital or dreams about diving without oxygen tanks (they're not scary dreams, just very much associated with lungs kicking off, so if I don't wake up with those at the time I will know in the morning that lungs were playing up). Other times I just think I wake up without remembering, and I'm also an idiot at night -I once woke up very SOB and it took me ages to remember what this sensation was and that I had a thing called an inhaler which might help!

As a result, I often try to take a few puffs of reliever before bed to improve my sleep because I know I won't necessarily wake up to do it.

This is all very difficult to explain to drs/asthma nurses, as they often seem to accept only specific kinds of 'disturbed sleep' as asthma ie wake up and take inhaler (yes I do have that but I also have other things I would count as asthma at night, though I am aware not every sleep disturbance will be that).

I have kind of given up on trying to explain because I get a million and one reasons why it can't be - really not sure why they're so keen to dismiss it. This is a tertiary centre too so I'd have expected more openness to oddities in asthma. I often just say I had disturbed nights X times and hope they don't press for details.

Glad to hear it's not just me who has the hidden asthma symptoms at night, though sorry to hear others get the same disturbance.