Nasty Dry Cough - A Singer's Road to Wellness...
I hope that this is of help to others to persevere when the weird stuff rears its head.
I have been suffering with this weird intermittent (unexpected) dry cough that originates straight back from my jugular notch (where your clavicles meet in the center). After a few coughing sessions, it tends to leave my vocal cords in an inflamed state. As you can imagine, this is a very precarious situation for a singer!
To date:
- I've been given Ventolin puffers
- I've been tested for asthma
- I had chest X-rays
- I've had the lung volume tests ( I blew at 117%)
- The doctor recently gave me Pantaloc to help defeat her suspicion of silent reflux. This has actually helped quite allot, but I still occasionally get the cough especially when I hit cold air
- Last phase is I am going to an ENT to finally get properly scoped.
in the meantime, - I use glutathione (Most effective for reducing resultant vocal cord inflammation)
I also dropped coffee and dairy, and drink Peppermint tea to keep the mucous off my cords, and licorice tea to ease any inflammation on my cords.
So now I wait for the ENT appointment... I'll let you know how it turns out
I have been suffering with this weird intermittent (unexpected) dry cough that originates straight back from my jugular notch (where your clavicles meet in the center). After a few coughing sessions, it tends to leave my vocal cords in an inflamed state. As you can imagine, this is a very precarious situation for a singer!
To date:
- I've been given Ventolin puffers
- I've been tested for asthma
- I had chest X-rays
- I've had the lung volume tests ( I blew at 117%)
- The doctor recently gave me Pantaloc to help defeat her suspicion of silent reflux. This has actually helped quite allot, but I still occasionally get the cough especially when I hit cold air
- Last phase is I am going to an ENT to finally get properly scoped.
in the meantime, - I use glutathione (Most effective for reducing resultant vocal cord inflammation)
I also dropped coffee and dairy, and drink Peppermint tea to keep the mucous off my cords, and licorice tea to ease any inflammation on my cords.
So now I wait for the ENT appointment... I'll let you know how it turns out
Comments
sounds a little bit like a tracheitis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracheitis). I wish you all the best and a fast recovery, mate.
Doc
Using the nasal camera he was able to see that there was no scar tissue, no nodes, and perfectly healthy vocal fold closure during vowel note ascensions. So that's great news yet again!
Probably be looking at seeing an upper respiratory specialist next to do a full-on sedated laryngoscopy...
She is of the mind that this stomach acid burning has caused the irritation that causes the dry coughs (that come on like a sneeze).
In her words, the reflux happens when I sleep, and the acid comes up to my throat and cooks my vocal cords.
Looks like I'll be going on some sort of reflux suppressant to combat it.
Hopefully this is the ticket and I can start to rebuild what I had and finally push it to the next level.
I had this also. My indication was a slight dry cough occasionally with tonsil stones. I wanted to get rid of the stones so I worked from that angle. What I found was that when I removed the major food allergen from my diet the stones and consequently the cough went away. I like you could never feel the reflux. Though sometimes if the level of allergen in my food was very high I would get a slight reflux. Maybe a food allergen test could help illuminate the problem so that you don't have to take the pills.
Shane
After 2 days being back home, we got a pizza as we were all too bagged to cook, and I felt the familliar fire in my throat as I went to sleep, and woke up feeling like I was shouting all night!
So it looks like pizza is off the menu lol
Maybe I'll experiment with different sauces and maybe pita crust so I don't have to cut it out altogether