What to do about coughing neighbors?

[Surianne]

Wait, he's not even waking you up, you only hear it when you're already awake?  I was against saying anything, but now I'm even more so.  How is this even a problem?

[Drunken Housewife]

This is part of living in an urban environment.  We have to accept hearing someone's coughing.  And wouldn't you feel terrible, OP, if you asked a neighbor to stop coughing and they informed you that they have asthma, bronchitis, cancer, or some other disease which is making their life a misery and that they can't help but cough?

The best solutions are to try to make your home as quiet as possible.  Sensitive, noise-averse Proust had his Parisian apartment lined with cork.

[exitzero]

I wouldn't say anything. I had a downstairs neighbor once who had a terrible cough. He would sometimes wake me up in the middle of the night, and this is in a building where you hardly ever hear any noise from other units.
Then one day I ran into him in the elevator, and he looked like he was very sick. He died a few months later.
Imagine how awful I would have felt if I had asked him to keep it down.

[onyonryngs]

I think you have to live with it.  I can't imagine what you could do about it.

The nicest thing I could think of would be to honestly say please let me treat you to a consultation with a pulmonologist; I'll also pay for the follow-up treatment.  The problem is that no matter how you say it, it will come across as snarky at best.

Pay for the guy to see a doctor?  I'm not sure that's a very realistic suggestion.  You're suggesting that the OP pay possibly thousands to get the guy to stop coughing outside her window?  Or was that just a joke that I completely missed?

[DavidH]

I agree that it's not realistic, but I can't think of another way to propose to stop their coughing.  I'm assuming that most people don't enjoy coughing and it's not like music that you can turn down.  Handing them a cough drop seems rather patronizing and in my experience they are not all that effective. 

The point I was trying to make is that you kind of have to live with it.

[Tea Drinker]

^^^ I have been tempted a time or two in the past, when strangers complained about my sniffling, to ask if they were prepared to pay for surgery to repair my deviated septum, plus my lost wages while I was recovering. I have thus far refrained, because it wouldn't be a reasonable request and I doubt the sort of person who demands a stranger stop breathing loudly would get the point. The point is that they are suggesting, if not demanding, that I spend a lot of money, and experience significant physical discomfort, to prevent their being annoyed for 20 minutes on a subway train if I am getting over a cold. (Antihistamines help with allergies, and thus with congestion from allergies, but are useless when it's not a histamine reaction.)

(The issue isn't just the money: it's that they're ordering someone they don't even know to have surgery, which my doctor has never suggested.)

[Roe]

Tea Drinker, how awful that you have to deal with such people!  And you are right, it probably is more of a "control" issue.  As I said before, life is messy, people just need to deal and get over it.

[thedudeabides]

Sounds like a situation made for noise-canceling headphones.