I had the Sore Throat from Hell for four days about three weeks ago. Went to Doc-in-a-Box and they gave me steroids and an antibiotic. Sort throat gone right away. Cough and nose blowing lasted almost two weeks. (Where does all that phlegm **come **from, FFS?) Nose drainage now stopped, lingering intermittent cough hanging on.
But my voice. Last week I was croaking like a frog. Better this week.
I’m drinking lots and lots of water. Using a throat spray I got at Whole Foods. I have a humidifier in the bedroom. Sleeping propped up on pillows to help with coughing during the night. I live alone so not talking a lot. I did have company yesterday evening and talked quite a bit, and my voice seemed to improve as the evening went on.
Any remedies from the peanut gallery to hasten the recovery process? Especially from the singers in the crowd? Our choir is doing some special Christmas stuff this evening, and I’ve not been able to produce one musical sound since this all started.
Lemon juice. The lil’wrekker dings in a chorale group. She’s had a off and on sore throat this past week. I made her a pitcher of lemonade, more tart than sweet. She heats it up a cup at a time. Seems to help. Vitamin C can’t hurt.
In my recurrent cases (which I’ve discussed here before), it always takes some high-octane prescription meds.
Antibiotics.
Prednisone.
Albuterol plus various corticosteroid inhalers.
Here’s one you should be able to get easily from your Doc-in-a-Box, I would hope:
Cough syrup with Guaifenesin and Codeine – This is good stuff to have on-hand.
Cough syrup with Codeine apparently isn’t the kind of opioid that everyone is all hysterical about these days. You shouldn’t have too much difficulty getting a Rx for it. My pharmacy even allows mail-order refills, which I would never have expected!
ETA: BTW: If your doctor (in a box or elsewhere) EVER prescribes an antibiotic with “flox” in its generic name, RUN DON’T WALK as far away as fast as you can. Those are industrial-strength antibiotics (fluoroquinolones) that sometimes have have gruesomely nasty adverse effects that can leave some patients irreversibly damaged. Common examples are Cipro (ciprofloxacin) and Levaquin (levofloxacin).
I recently had an extremely painful experience using a steroid medication. My problem was caused because this particular product was only supposed to be used over a very short term (about one week). But it worked well for me so I continued to use it for a time longer than one week and eventually, I began to suffer from terrible pain and was just about to check myself into an ER.
Thank goodness I spoke with my pharmacy first however, and they told me that it can be a common problem when people use steroid products for a time longer than it was prescribed to be used. People can suffer nasty and painful side effects.
I have no idea how long your product was prescribed to be used or for how long you used it. I just wanted to caution you about this because the consequences I suffered were really terrible.
I was on the steroids for six days. Antibiotic for 10 days (no flox). I was taking Mucinex during the worst of it-- it’s Guafenesen in a pill. Don’t really want codeine-- very little coughing any more.
I did manage to sing some tonight. Brought a container of honey-lemon-tea with me. The heavy-duty singing is over for now.
I always lean towards a comforting hot beverage for throat issues. In my case at least, it doesn’t actually matter all that much what I drink as long as it doesn’t contain much dairy. Hot chocolate and lattes are right out. I usually sip a hot broth of a milder, less astringent tea but whatever floats your boat is what you need.
Thanks for bumping this. The cough is gone. The voice is showing signs of returning eventually. I still occasionally sound somewhere between R2-D2 and a frog. This morning I was able to emit a few musical-ish sounds. But I’m home alone today so I have the opportunity to completely rest my voice. I will be having some hot tea in just a minute (to go with tonight’s episode of Father Brown).
Rest is the best cure of all but if you must talk then drop your voice into a much lower register than usual, you’ll usually be able to speak more or less normally if you do. Used to work call center and I’m prone to laryngitis when I get a cold, that’s the only way I managed to get through my shifts. Apparently I sound like the American Marlene Dietrich when I do this and get a lot of weird compliments on my deep raspy tones. Buncha weirdos out there.
