Brooklyn Gaytz is almost 2 years old and for weeks now she has been fighting off her cough. Her dad Nick says this is their second trip to the doctor. "It's been about two weeks of torture."
Which is why they're back at the doctor's again and hoping this nagging cough will go away. "The cough is the number one issue. We're gonna try and hope for the best. It's screaming all night and crying all day."
Family Physician Dr. Ken Elek says these lingering symptoms are common among his patients. "The people that just have a nagging cough and don't feel so bad, so they're out there, they're going to work everyday, they're probably not infectious, but they just need something to try to help them calm down the symptoms."
He says 90 percent of the cases he's seeing are NOT bacterial. "If it's not bacterial then antibiotics don't do any good. They don't make it go away any faster."
Which is why patients could expect symptoms like a cough or runny nose to last awhile. "It sometimes takes a month or a little bit longer."
He says the best thing you can do is take over-the-counter medications to calm down the symptoms, which will help with any irritation that's leading to the cough. And if you're worried about taking them for days if not weeks, Dr. Elek says, there's not much to worry about. "Hang in there until the symptoms go away."
At Doctors Express Urgent Care Clinic, they're seeing the same symptoms.
"Symptoms seem to linger. We're seeing a lot of hard coughing, persistent cough," says RN Dale Carl.
Which is exactly what Brooklyn's fighting. They're taking the doctor's advice. They're hanging in there, but as you can imagine, they're ready to kick this for good.
