medical advice on chronic cough

[Poundwise]

Another possibility is cough-variant asthma.

My doctor thinks I have it... I coughed clear, sticky mucus for months and broke ribs twice coughing (that is in fact how I came to start posting here! was sick and bored). Despite having an inhaler, I would feel like I was choking to death at least once a day. A Medrol (methylprednisolone) dosepack fixed me immediately both times, but if it doesn't work next time I don't know what I'll do... die, I guess. Both times it started with a bad cold... we guess that I may have had an allergy to the virus, and then my system got stuck in a cycle of self-irritation.

So that's another thing to check, especially if asthma runs in your family.

I'd never heard of this. It sounds terrible!

It is the pits.  But I have to say that my faith in medicine was revived by how well the Medrol worked for me (and no, I don't work for whoever makes it.)

I hope that OP gets a good diagnosis and a successful treatment soon!

[goatmom]

Acupuncture?  Couldn't hurt.  Very low risk.

[mountains_o_mustaches]

+1 for the cough-variant asthma - was recently diagnosed and an inhaler helped a lot.  Overall, though, I would not be making medical decisions based on feedback from likely non-medical providers on an internet forum.  Even if we were all medical doctors, it's hard to make diagnosis w/o seeing you.

IBM's Watson can do it.

Unfortunately most humans don't have access to the same databases of medical information as Watson and are not as logical (people will say it's what they're most familiar with.  It sounds like it could be asthma to me, but that's probably because I have asthma - Watson wouldn't make those kind of mistakes).  So maybe I can amend my recommendation - go to a doctor or Watson ;-P