Since the age of 4, I have something my doctors call a “medical mystery” which is: coughing!
I cough non-stop and no one has been able to explain it, so ask me about it! 🙂
I’m 21 with a medical mystery, AMA!
r/AMA
Since the age of 4, I have something my doctors call a “medical mystery” which is: coughing!
I cough non-stop and no one has been able to explain it, so ask me about it! 🙂
Comments
Just want to say: I do the same thing! Everyone on my mom’s side of the family does it.
How much fun did you have during the height of Covid precautions trying to explain “I don’t have Covid, I just do this.”?
Does cough medicine help?
My mil has this too. :/ She’s tried everything!
Did you get your nerves checked? Literally, maybe a malformation around the Vagus nerve.
Did you see a naturopath, could it be food allergies!
Have you given ChatGPT a try? Seriously there was medical mystery that over 10 doctors couldn’t figure out and they input the notes from the doctors into ChatGPT and it figured out the diagnosis.
Do you cough blood? I have a friend who started coughing blood (much older than you but still not an adult) and it went unsolved for years. Finally her lung collapsed completely out of nowhere, and the doctors went bananas trying to solve it and finally did: it’s friggin endometriosis in her lungs! Judging by the age your coughing started at, it’s extremely unlikely to be the same thing, but I figure medical mystery understanders should help troubleshoot a bit just in case.
Is it like hard coughing like when someone is sick or is it like clear your throat coughing. Do you have a chronically dry throat?
Nice try, Phillip morris
A friend of mine coughs, not continuously but it’s just one cough fairly frequently. She has Gerd/reflux and the gas coming up out of her stomach is what causes it.
Fibrosis in the lungs? Probably not since you said there’s nothing from the x-rays
I also have an unexplained chronic cough. It sucks. I’ve been through the ringer with allergy, asthma, and reflux treatments. Nothing works. I don’t think it’s a nerve issue as some have suggested because I’m actually coughing up stuff. If I don’t cough it up, it would end up in my lungs. Mine started suddenly in my mid 30s though. Still have it at 41.
There’s 3 main things that can cause chronic cough
I recently saw this pop up (researching for a kiddo that has an upcoming evaluation):
Can Bronchioscopic Airway Anatomy Be an Indicator of Autism?
I remember reading a story that a girl since a young age had coughing fits and I think they thought she had TB based on some kind of scan, one that picks up more detail than an xray. It turns out as a baby she inhaled a pine needle from the christmas tree. Her body walled it off, and it didn’t break down and cause infection but acted as an irritant.
Could it be something like that?
The nerve thing someone else wrote sounds like a reasonable thing to pursue also. Throwing up and coughing can get in like an irritation loop or cycle that is self perpetual, I think I heard at some point. I may not be saying it properly.
What have you tried holistic-diet wise?Ty
Could it be Tourette’s? Genuinely asking. I know it comes in all shapes and forms
is it triggered by certain things? my roommate starts coughing after eating. she’s not choking or anything, there’s just a period of 10-15 minutes after a meal where she’ll cough pretty frequently. no idea why, she just calls it her “food coughs.” does yours have triggers like that, or is it really just non-stop?
Have you been checked for auto immune issues like Sjogrens?
My mom has that and has dry mouth & throat & eyes & tinnitus & always feels like there’s burrs in her throat, she coughs a lot but it’s a dry cough.
I have a chronic wet cough too, but it’s 1-3 days a week as opposed to all day every day. It started with a flu I got from my kid, and never went away. Covid twice didn’t help. What I know is that it’s not gerd/reflux, asthma, lung infection, post nasal drip. My lungs work fine (according to tests). CT scans from head to pelvis show nothing. BUT I have chronic inflammation, the cough receptors in my throat/bronchials are hyper active/sensitive, high levels of neutrophils, lymphocytes & monocytes that are slowly creeping higher but not exceptionally so to lead to a thought it’s leukaemia. I choke a lot on my saliva and food, but not severely enough to think it could be esophagitis. I have had pet birds for years but it’s not mould/bird lung (no weight loss).
I can sympathize with the frustration, embarrassment in public, and how tiring it is.
My daughter had this and we tried everything medical to no effect. A single session of hypnosis cured her – have you tried that?
Have they looked into silent reflux?
My sister has a rare form of asthma that appears as a chronic cough.
I’ve always coughed a lot too, turns out I have the coughing variant of asthma, didn’t find out until I was in my 40s. Didn’t know that was even a thing. Have you been tested for that?
What’s the frequency of the coughs? How many per minute?
My family member has had a chronic cough for decades. Their diagnosis is sensory neuropathic cough. Maybe something to look into?
PANDAS: stands for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections. Rare but plausible. Any history of strep infections?
My son does to. He’s 13
I’ve taken him to doctor after doctor.
I’ve just said over and over that it’s a tick
I had a post viral syndrome years back. And I couldn’t stop coughing, it was like a spasm. It was in covid that made it 10x worse to be around people
Use chat GPT to assess your coughing issue?
Have you looked into Paradoxical Vocal Cord Dysfunction (PVCD)?
Do you have ripped abs from coughing?
My husband had a persistent cough for a decade. Ended up being a benign schwannoma tumor in his parapharyngeal space pushing on vagus nerve. Got it removed and had no more cough. I also know someone with vagus nerve compression and a cough from Eagles Syndrome where your styloids are extra long. Can be diagnosed via dental pano xray.
Thank you for making this post. I’ve been coughing for about 3 years and doctors haven’t been able to find out why. Currently waiting to see a respiratory specialist so will save this until then to look back on.
I used to have a smokers cough from cigs, I started smoking weed as the coughing got annoying and I only cough now if I’ve smoked to much weed lol
Could be a tic, especially if other conditions have been ruled out.
Edit – I just read the comment about it occurring in sets of 3, the exacerbation while in public, and all the tests that have been unrevealing. Suggest seeing neuro or psych to look into a tic disorder.
My dad has this too. Has had it ever since he worked ground zero cleanup in NYC after 9/11. Many tests and doctors over the last two decades with zero solutions. Even had part of his stomach removed as the latest last ditch effort and it only helped for a few weeks.
My father had the same thing.
Although American, his ancestry was Scottish and English, which there’s a higher percentage of people born with the same small chin he had.
His was such a predictable cough in terms of it’s pattern of sounds that for.a while a doctor thought it may have been like a tourette or OCD Tic. It was 4 coughs, an inhale, 7-8 coughs, a wheeze inhale, 5-6 more coughs with sometimes a productive mucus cough up.
During a coughing spell, he’d sometimes cough for such a long period of time that he’d get lightheaded which made for some steering wheel grabs by me from the back seat from age 10 on as he’d nearly pass out for a few seconds until he regained his senses.
Did it affect me? Absolutely. Like kids of parents with condituons like epilepsy the family was always on alert, especially when he drove . I asked mom why she let him drive. To me it’s a no-brainer with kids in the car.. “You know your father, you couldn’t tell him anything”. Yep. Career Military officer.
I’m in my late 50s and he died at age 75, but for as long as I remember he had it. Mom said it developed in the early 1970s, which correlated with a job relocation to a military base in Alaska, so it was thought that perhaps he had lung damage from cold weather. No one knows. He did have allergies.
He later went on to have throat surgery to open the airway, because they thought it had something to do with a poorly formed airway. Didn’t help.
Last fall I (21F) got bronchitis which lasted into the winter and developed into asthma. I thought my life was over because of the constant, insatiable coughing. But that was only for a couple months, I can’t imagine how it’s affected you since you literally grew up with it? I mean, after 17 years, are you miserable or are you used to it?
Have you taken Pregnizone? Doesn’t that fix almost everything on House?
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Have you had an endoscopy to check for eosinophilc esophagitis
Have you consulted a physicist instead of a physician?Â
“No clue” got translated into “Chronic Asymptomatic Idiopatic Cough” at any doc’s office when I was younger. Best I can think of now was it being some sort of tic that got a hold of me for a while.