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Old people and hard candy
- Thread starter anonymous
- Start date
Obviously I am new to this! Anyway on a recent trip to the grocery store, once I entered the frozen foods department I began having a major coughing fit. Since I planned on only picking up one or two things I left my purse at home, with my inhaler in it. So all I could do was stand there and wait for it to cough. It was one of those bronchial spasm coughing fits, where you can't move and it feels like someone is wrapping there hands around your throat and cutting off your air. Anyway I tried to take a couple of nice relaxed breaths hoping to get the fit to stop when all of a sudden I realized I was surrounded by a bunch of senior citizens. I live in FL in a city big for the retirees. Anyway I couldn't talk but I did manage to get out that I would be ok. Before I realized it I had handfuls of hard candy. Old people I have found out keep hard candy in every pocket of every outfit they own. Of course a hard candy would have only worsened my coughing fit, but it's the thought that counts. It's hard for me to tell them I have CF when I start coughing like that. I am not your typical CFer. I have 4 kids and am severely overweight, between me and the millions of people who might access this site in a day, I weigh 350. I swear I am the result of mother nature's cruel joke. She gave me this disease that causes most of the people who have it to be skinny, but I don't get to be skinny. Then as if that is not bad enough, she makes me severely overweight and forgets to give me the chest of an obese women! I can't win. You all stay healthy, and God bless you all.
Try peppermint oil or those really strong mints like Altoids. If you haven't already that is. Peppermint oil is a trick we learned while in Germany. They are really big on natural stuff. Anyway, that is what they give their pilots when they are stuffy since they have to be grounded if they take real drugs. Off the point though. My daughter started using it while we were there, at first for stuffyness then realized that it helped her coughing fits too. It opens up the airways and seems to ease the spasm. The peppermint oil has be ingestible of course so it's a little hard to find but try those herbal type stores. One bottle lasts a really long time because you just need a tiny drop and WHOOOOHOOO, it opens you right up. Liza
I know how you feel. I also have very atypical cf. I am also overweight. It is hard when the rest of the cf community as well as the medical community sees everyone with CF as to having problems with maintinaing weight. As for the coughing thing.... what a nice gesture!<img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif" border="0">
A nice gesture by some folks who didn't understand the source of your cough. See, hard candy is a reasonable alternative to cough drops, if cough drops aren't available, (and presumably alot cheaper too). Kind of amusing when you think of some of the old time remedies... I remember as a teen, I had a plantars wart that my grandmother treated with a bread and milk poultice. Sounds weird, I know, but I swear it worked! Within a couple of days, it started to heal and within a week, mostly gone.... Home remedies like this one was how our ancestors got by, before the advent of even the most commonly used over-the-counter medicines we've grown to depend on- assuming that our ancestors had the money to pay for such 'luxuries.' Just my two cents....-SW
just the other night at dinner my grandma started choking and she ripped out the hard candies! she always offers them to me when I'm coughing, i actually find that they help a little. I'm not technically overweight, but I definitely DEFINITELY did not get the skinny consolation prize they say comes with this disease. I hate that more than anything!! And I'm kind of bitter because as a kid I was underweight, and so my CF doc and my mom encouraged me to eat lots of hi-calorie junk food, so I never developed healthy eating habits. Now I'm eighteen and fighting to learn to control my eating, but my mom is STILL forcing food down my throat when I'm with her. Everyone says I look so healthy but I simply hate my body, and oftentimes I've had the awful wish that I'd get sicker so I'd lose some weight. But instead, I just have to diet like the majority of other women out there. Life is never fair.- scarlett