<p>I don’t know what to do anymore. I have to go through cough drops 5 times an hour. Even 6-8 DXM pills/day is starting to fail on me. </p>
<p>It’s not severe or life-threatening (yet). It’s the only symptom that exists (it got triggered by a one-time exposure to a lot of smoke). But it’s not showing any signs of getting better, and I’m just getting tolerant to the DXM…</p>
<p>Go to the doctor.</p>
<p>You go to a doctor and get medication for it. Otherwise keep drinking lots of liquids. Vitamin C can help too apparently, though I never really took any. Cough drops help sometimes when you’re forced to be out in public and need help controlling your cough. Lots of soup can help as well. I always love eating tomato soup when I have a sore throat/cough :)</p>
<p>You’re just like me, smoke makes me sick and until lately, my neighbor’s smoke has been creeping into my side of the duplex and giving me bronchitis and sinus infections and whatnot. Here’s whatcha do:</p>
<p>Remember the two 'F’s: fluids ‘n’ flem (meaning “phlegm”, but zippier because it’s spelled differently)</p>
<p>Get plenty of fluids, ideally from water or from eating lots of fruit or fruit juice. Do not get it from soda, your kidneys will thank you (I’m not anti-soda at all, it’s just best in moderation, like one or two servings with dinner, not as something you drink for hydration). Your body needs fluids to make its phlegm runnier so it doesn’t stick to the inside of your lungs and chest.</p>
<p>The other part of the process is to get as much phlegm out of you as possible. Don’t cough and then swallow it back down, stand over the toilet and hack that stuff out as hard as you can. The phlegm is like poison, if you don’t keep getting it out you get pneumonia and that is serious!</p>
<p>[How</a> to Get Rid of Phlegm - howtogetridofstuff.com](<a href=“http://www.howtogetridofstuff.com/health/how-to-get-rid-of-phlegm/]How”>How to Get Rid of Phlegm - How To Get Rid Of Stuff)</p>
<p>If you cough and cough and you can get it as high as your throat but can’t actually get it out (or even worse, it gets stuck on your gag reflex and you fight back the heaves, happened to me with a big tablespoon of the stuff), what you can do is induce sneezing.</p>
<p>[How</a> to Make Yourself Sneeze | eHow.com](<a href=“http://www.ehow.com/how_2039010_make-yourself-sneeze.html]How”>http://www.ehow.com/how_2039010_make-yourself-sneeze.html)</p>
<p>^^ as disgusting as that sounds… tom’s right. get the phlegm out of you!!</p>
<p>Oh okay - thanks very much for the valuable post Tom! I don’t notice any phlegm in my throat at all. But maybe it’s because I need to get an expectorant - maybe that will get some of the phlegm out.</p>
<p>You still should probably go to the doctor if its not going away. Whooping cough and other persistant stuff is going around.</p>
<p>yeah i should. it has significantly worsened. i’m very sick now. i don’t know what else to do :(</p>
<p>Sigh, why is everything closed until Monday? :(</p>
<p>you need anti biotics for resperatory infections. all the vitamin C and water in the world will not help. too much water is lethal anyway</p>