your whooping cough, tell me about it

September 5, 2024 9:36 PM

Have you had whooping cough as an adult? How did that go for you? Did anything help the symptoms?

Whooping cough is making me beyond miserable. Looking for any and all suggestions for supporting my body during recovery, and mitigating the symptoms as much as possible. Please keep in mind I cannot take any cough suppressants with DM (and also apparently they don't help much). Things I have already tried / been doing for symptom relief:

- Buckley's cough syrup
- Cough syrup with Codeine
- Mucinex
- Tylenol Cold
- Advil Cold
- Inhalations with dried Eucalyptus
- Hot ginger tea with honey
- Manuka honey losenges
- Prednisone
- Pulmicort
- Singulair
- Albuterol rescue inhaler

Please give me more ideas. I need at least hope that something can relieve my misery a bit.

Also please tell me how long it lasted for you, especially if you were vaccinated and boosted, like I am. I am, I think, in Week 5 of being sick.

Please only comment if you yourself have had it, or if someone close to you has had it, and you were privy to whatever it was that helped them and the course of the illness. I have already read basically every Reddit post about it.

posted by virve to Health & Fitness (16 answers total)

I had it in 2014, it suuuuucked. Definitely lasted at least 4 weeks and by the time I went to the doctor I was basically crawling to the receptionist's desk.

I ended up getting a prescription for tessalon perles and cough syrup with codeine, and both of those things made just enough of a dent that I could sleep. (For what it's worth, I don't think either one contains DM but I'm not 100% certain on that codeine syrup.) I hope you get some relief soon!
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:04 PM on September 5

oh heck now I see you've already tried the codeine. well hell. Maybe still worth adding the Tessalon perles into the mix?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:05 PM on September 5

Sister-in-law had it when she was in maybe her 40s. I don't have any specific advice for medications and such (though I note the CDC says OTC cough medicines don't really help and are discouraged - though antibiotic treatment seems to help and is something you could get if you are not already).

If I recall, she was quite ill for a long time. Like very sick for a month, quite ill for yet another month, and then still low energy/under the weather for maybe another 4-6 months.

My only suggestion, then, is to just plan for this reality. Make resting and recuperating your main priority for the next several months. Change or delay any energy-sapping or ambitious plans you might have. Start thinking that you have a limited energy budget and figure out what you can spend it on and just omit the things that will exceed your budget. Plan to spend a lot of time sleeping in when possible and just generally resting.
posted by flug at 11:13 PM on September 5

Seconding tessalon perles. They aren't magic, but they certainly work better than any other cough medicine I've ever used.
posted by mostlymartha at 11:30 PM on September 5 [4 favorites]

I'm not sure if I had whooping cough but I was coughing hard enough to throw up water a couple times. Don't know if this will be helpful but I ran a humidifier until it felt like I was in the jungle and slept as upright as possible leaning against the bathroom wall. My cat stayed with me the whole time and I felt so loved until I realized she adored the steam. A really hot, steamy bath might help as well.
Tessalon perles are good. Got them prescribed when I had Covid. They let me get some sleep but I coughed up gunk as soon as I woke up.
posted by stray thoughts at 12:57 AM on September 6

I had it in 2015, vaccinated but not boosted anytime recently. It was extremely difficult. At first I just had three days of what I thought was a really nasty cold. Then that cleared up, but a few days later I started the nasty, dry barking cough that just got worse until I had it most of the time. I coughed so violently that I sometimes threw up my food or momentarily lost control of my bladder. The constant cough had me very tired all the time and also perpetually on edge.

I am not actually sure if anything helped, except with the "wet" cold symptoms. The dry cough was stubborn. I tried all the cough remedies of my childhood, including ginger-lemon-honey concoctions, cough lozenges, and Buckley's. I got as much rest as I could and just tried to be patient; the rest is probably what gave me strength to deal with another day of coughing. It took its time and went away completely after around four months, though there was a marked improvement after three months.

I hope you start to feel better soon and wish you lots of physical strength to deal with the cough and recover from it.
posted by underthelilacs at 3:44 AM on September 6

I had it in 2010 and echoing that rest was the best. My doctor said another name for it is the 100 day cough and that tracked with my experience.

The only two things that helped a little that aren’t on your list was I used a sock of dry rice (but there are products as well) that I would microwave and put on my chest at night. The other was Vicks Vap-o-rub. Both were mostly to try to relax things a bit.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:02 AM on September 6 [1 favorite]

When I had it, they prescribed a five day course of antibiotics and told me to isolate until it was finished. Other than that, cough drops and time. I’m sorry! It will get better.
posted by eirias at 5:08 AM on September 6

I was 13, not an adult, so I don't know if it is somehow different for adults but aside from codeine - more for the pain than cough suppression - I found it helped a lot to sleep in a reclined position, not a flat one. In a layzboy or against a pile of pillows was my thing at the time. There are wedges and back rest pillows specifically for that now.

Also try an acid reducer like ranitidin. I still have kinda shaky lungs as an adult and when it comes up coughing so much gives me horrible heart burn which makes the coughing worse in a vicious cycle.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:52 AM on September 6

So many hot, steamy showers. And a humidifier running next to my bed.

Hang in there, it will get better.
posted by cooker girl at 6:01 AM on September 6

I'm so sorry you're still suffering! I had it in early 2023 and was only really bad for a couple of weeks. I was prescribed antibiotic tablets which really helped, and I ended up with double pinkeye from it as well so I had antibiotic eye ointment. Unfortunately my solution - which was DayQuil during the day, NyQuil at night - won't help you, but I also used a lot of Chloraseptic throat spray to try to numb my throat and Cepacol lozenges (also numbing). Finding a position you can sleep in is key, I had every pillow in the house nearby so I could prop myself up.
posted by some chick at 7:54 AM on September 6

I am so so sorry you are dealing with this! I had both Chickenpox (there was no vaccine yet) and Whooping Cough (I was vaccinated) as an adult and that is about the sickest I have been with an illness (though the latest variant of Covid has been kind of kicking my butt right now).

Keep up with the Mucinex and the inhaler. I did find that drinking hot tea or other hot liquids like soup helped a little, and staying hydrated to try to thin out secretions in general is a good idea. Also, the advice to sleep propped up is spot on.

The number one thing that helped me the most, particularly when I was (trying) to sleep, was using a steam vaporizer (rather than a humidifier). I won't discount using a humidifier during the day, but the only thing that made a major difference for me for sleeping was to use a steam vaporizer. (Hot showers also mimic a steam vaporizer but the machine is a steadier source.)

(I will note that I wound up with a bit of a residual cough for about a year after Whooping Cough, i.e. if I ran too long/hard I would start coughing a bit.)
posted by gudrun at 8:13 AM on September 6

I remembered something else that helped me. I kept a heating pad on low on my chest. It can burn your skin if you leave it on for long periods so don't go for higher settings. It's considered a fire risk but I was so miserable, I didn't care. It let me sleep. Do check the wiring on the pad to make sure it's it doesn't have any damage. Use at your own risk but it really helped me.
posted by stray thoughts at 3:57 PM on September 6

Reading through this, I realize that I probably had this earlier this year. I was vaccinated as a child, but not sure I ever got a booster as an adult.

I developed what I thought was a cold on Valentine's Day, and finally called my doctor at the end of March because the cough wasn't getting better. It took another couple of weeks to really fade (so probably about eight weeks or so).

I never found anything to suppress the cough. I mostly dealt with the pain by drinking lots of hot tea. I was also very lucky that it coincided with a low point at work, so I was able to rest a lot.
posted by invokeuse at 5:09 PM on September 6

I'll add: I thought it was "just" acid reflux and my doctor prescribed some OTC proton pump inhibitor. It didn't hurt, but I'm not sure it helped any.

Sorry you're feeling rotten. It gets better!
posted by invokeuse at 5:11 PM on September 6

I had what I believed was whooping cough (PCP at the time seemed to believe it didn't exist any more, one reason I left them) some years ago. For me, what helped the most was to sleep, with my head slightly elevated (two pillows). I sleep on my side if that matters. I am, I guess, fortunate, in two ways: 1) I inherited good genes [Thanks, Mom and Dad!] and am rarely ill; and 2) that my SOP for illness is to sleep as much as possible and I am usually able to sleep when I want. This was the sickest I had been in decades - when I got up to go to the bathroom, or to eat something, the cough came right back!

Sorry you're dealing with it and hope it is over soon for you.
posted by TimHare at 6:24 PM on September 8