“And not that I condone this… but I do it sometimes…. if you have leftover antibiotics in the house… use them. They usually prescribe amoxicillin for this type of thing or zithromax.”

using the wrong antibiotics/ not enough or wrong dose/ expired medication does WAY MORE HARM than good. This is how were getting this anti-biotic resistant “super bugs”. Bronchitis can be bacterial AND viral. If you’ve got the viral kind, there really isn’t anything you can do but rest and take it easy. Since your immune system is getting its ass kicked, make sure you rest and don’t expose yourself to sick people, b/c your more likely to get whatever they’ve got and extend your misery. And if you take an anitbiotic… and its the wrong dose, not enough blah blah… then all you’ve done is killed off the weakest ones and left the strong ones to multiply…. and who has leftover antibiotic’s these days????? you need to take the WHOLE course of them to make sure all those things are killed, otherwise you are perpetuating the probelm.
I can definitly appriciate the no insurance thing.. I went without for many years and I get bronchitis about twice a year and i have a dry hacking cough from about october until april….. however.. sometimes you just have to go and pay for it out of pocket… i’ve never had to do a chest x ray.. and sometimes they have samples of t he antibiotic you need and give them to you for free.

oh.. and humidifiers do help alot

Feel better soon, Smokey!

Hate to say it, Smokey, but try to smoke as little as possible. The good news is coffee is good for bronchitis. Actually, ephredine is, too. I have asthma, so it’s my coffee excuse.

The only other thing I would recommend is sweat. Bundle up more and get your metabolism going. That, fluids (preferrably warm to hot), steam and the occasional applicable med usually does the trick for me.

If you have it and you don’t treat it, it turns into pneumonia. So you have to take it seriously. I’ve tried to wait it out on two separate occasions over the years and ended up with pneumonia.

My older son gets bronchitis a lot. Thankfully, he is the one among us that has benefits (provided thankfully by his dad.) My younger child doesn’t have medical benefits and I live in fear that he’ll catch the bronchitis from his older brother. I’m not even sure its contagious–but just the thought of paying for a chest x-ray, a visit to the doc and the antibiotics for the little one scares the crap out of me. Thankfully he’s been pretty healthy so far.

If you do end up going to the doc without benefits, tell them you need them to make the diagnosis by assessing your symptoms and to forego the x-ray. That will save you money even if it doesn’t give them a “complete” picture. Its the antibiotics you need.

And not that I condone this… but I do it sometimes…. if you have leftover antibiotics in the house… use them. They usually prescribe amoxicillin for this type of thing or zithromax.

Hey, you do what you can do with what you have, right?

Anyway, I used to have allergy-induced bronchitis and miss 3 weeks of school every winter when I was a kid (I was literally allergic to school - it had mold). I only got better for good when we figured out the source of it was the allergies, since they would turn into a cold, which turned into bronchitis. So I say do what you can for the cold & the cough, but also try to find the source so it doesn’t come back.

Humidifiers, improvised or otherwise, really help - I find that I often get a runny nose from dry air, and that usually stops when I increase the humidity. And also all that other hot-drinks-and-soup stuff.

(P.S. Anne, email me.)

Okay, so I went overboard and took everyone’s advice: I’m drinking tea with whiskey and honey (not bad!), and I’ve been boiling a massive vat of water on the stove in lieu of a humidifier. I feel pretty good right now.