News update

Visiting my blog for the first time in a while I notice it's just over a year since I was last on the radio!!!

Anyway, quite a few interesting posts recently under that topic...

From my point of view, yesterday I had my first, long-awaited, appointment with a Speech & Language Therapist.  The theory seems to be this... from all the various investigations I've had over the years, there isn't an identifiable cause/reason for the cough, but my "throat has developed an overall heightened sensitivity, so I cough more easily and intensely."  What I need to do is break the habit  and learn to control the cough: if I can reduce the number of times I cough it should reduce the overall sensitivity.

What the approach boils down to, apart from some odd face-pulling exercises which I think may be a bit token, is that I have to stop myself from coughing or clearing my throat by sipping water repeatedly until the urge goes, combining it with taking small sniffs and breathing out through the nose - so sips and sniffs!

I tried it when I woke at 4am this morning and it did seem to work, to an extent - I still coughed, but nowhere near as much as usual, and I wasn't racked with it and exhausted by the end of it ... I even went back to sleep.

Early days yet, I'll report back in a couple of weeks time.