Paulette Nyahay on the Empowerment That Comes From Talking About Chronic Cough

Paulette Nyahay has a chronic cough unrelated to her asthma; here, she discusses how she works with multiple doctors and about how she discusses her condition with others.

Transcript

Having the long experience you had before you were diagnosed and treated for chronic cough, how important is it to increase awareness among patients and providers of what chronic cough is and how it impacts people?

I feel empowered to talk about it even to doctors if they don't want to agree about it. I do see 2 doctors, I have 2 pulmonologists that I work with. My local pulmonologist that I've seen for many, many years and the other pulmonologist that is in the city and we work with a lot with chronic cough and a couple of other things, trials through this hospital that I work with. I do some research with them for being a patient with asthma and chronic cough, or you know, things like that. So I really work with that with her. And then I work with my doctor locally here that if I have a sore throat I call him up or you know when we talk about things and we talk about chronic cough and he listens and he says, “You know, I tell other patients now that you might have something more than this and you know we can work with that, there are doctors that can work with you for it.” So they're coming on board. When I cough out in public and other people that know me, you know, they look and they go, “Wow, look, do you know what's going on?” I get to say I have asthma, but I have something else called a chronic cough, explain what chronic office is. I'm always open to tell people about chronic cough and some people just don't even know it. I notice now people that clear their throats are coughing and I don't go up to them and start telling them these things but I feel every opportunity that I have to open up and share with people, “You have something called chronic cough. Just because you have asthma doesn’t mean that you don't have a chronic cough. Just because you have allergies doesn't mean you don't have a chronic cough.”