Common cold turning into more?

[sasha]

I used to be able to fight off colds without any meds and go completely back to normal! "CF normal," that is. But last time, I thought I could do the same and ended up needing antibiotics. Well, now it's day 5 of this new cold. The cold symptoms are gone but now I am wheezy and coughing up a ton of crap. I called my cf doc and he's putting me on keflex, because we both believe it is probably turning into a bacterial infection.

My question is, how long do you wait to get antibiotics when you have a cold? Do you get them at all or are you able to fight it yourself without it turning serious?

 

[Ratatosk]

With ds we usually increase treatments, try sinus rinses, but if he gets a fever and or starts coughing --- he usually doesn't cough -- and we figure it's one of those productive chesty or bronchial sounding coughs (as opposed to dry post nasal drip one) we put a call into his doctor.

 

[nmw0615]

My colds, if they stay colds, follow an extremely predictable pattern, with only a day or two of variance. My colds always start as head colds, and those stick around for about 2-3 days. Then it becomes more of a chest cold. I have an absolutely horrible cough for about 4 days. And then it's like a switch is flipped and everything stops.

If my cough sticks around longer than 5 days, I call my doctor immediately. I'm extremely grateful that my colds always follow this timeline. It makes it easy to figure out where I am in the cycle, and if my cough is becoming more serious.

My advice is always to hedge on the careful side. It may not be antibiotic time, but it never hurts to get advice from the doctor.

 

[imported_Momto2]

I dont usually get the colds that my kids bring home. If I do, they are generally short and cause a temporary drop in my O2 sats and some wheezing, coughing. But 90% of the time that all clears up after about a week. If at any point my sputum changes to a more virulent color, if I start running a fever over 100 (a very low grade fever is common for me with a cold), if my 02 sats drop below 90, or I just generally feel like my nebbies and coughing arent keeping my lungs clear, I immediately start on oral antibiotics. However, usually I am savvy enough to get extra sleep during this time and really take care of my body (I always eat very very well with tons of veggies and fruit) and make sure I get plenty of aerobic exercise. I do have a very aggressive immune system (its taken a pretty good dose of chemo just to beat it back from overdrive to normal) so that probably helps a ton.