My husband has been sick for a few days now. He has a history of lingering coughs whenever he is sick, also from allergies. He can cough for weeks or months. I don t think the doctor examined him very closely, just gave him a prescription refill of some of his cough meds (including one with codine). He is complaining that for the last couple days, it feels like there is a flap of skin in his throat. He asked me to look inside, and it did look like there was a lump that didn t belong there, at the back of his tongue. I looked up pictures online, and the closest thing I could see was a picture of epiglottitis. He is breathing, but coughing a lot. Besides being sick and having a sore throat, he does not have any of the other epiglottitis symptoms. The only information I can find relates to pretty severe symptoms. Will his irritated epiglottis heal on its own or is it pretty much guaranteed to progress into a real case of epiglottits? Does he need treatment? And how urgently does he need it? He is not experiencing noisy or labored breathing.