Sucking on a Fisherman’s Friend

The coughing is really annoying – it started in a small way about 7 months ago and I didn’t really think anything much about it. But slowly, as time progresses, it got worse until sometimes I am now left doubled over and almost unable to breath – When I first saw my GP he didn’t want to give me anything to help with the coughing but relented and gave me a codeine based linctus – this worked after a fashion but as it made me constipated and I had to balance poohing against coughing!

Then I saw my GP in the first week of January and I have moved onto a morphine based medicine – I believe it to be actually a painkiller rather than a cough mixture and the idea is to make me less susceptible to the cough reflex and – HURRAH! – it does seem to be working. The downside is that it makes me feel fuzzy round the edges and so I do try to limit the number of doses I take.

Although the coughing is very annoying for me - and I suspect even more so for my partner Gavin - in one way I am lucky with the coughing – it only happens when I am upright, lying down it doesn’t seem to happen. That means that I can sleep.

I am also getting through a lot of Fisherman’s Friends - I have boxes of “Original”, “Cherry”, “Mint” and “Blackcurrant” and I’m awaiting delivery of a box of Lemon flavoured ones! So I spend my days sucking on Fisherman’s Friends and swigging morphine based medicine.