I have been sick for a month...I am on my 2nd round of antibiotics and I have never had to deal with this much phlegm ever! Mylungs are hurting so bad and I have coughing sprees (similar to bronchitis, but not bronchitis).
I manage to gag up some phlegm but I can hear and feel so much more in there. Ido believe the pills are working..slowly...but the phlegm drives me nuts. I do not get any more than 2 hours of sleep before I wake up in the middlle of another coughing fit...this goes on all night! I am so tired of it!Does anyone have any ideas on how to get phlegm up and outta there???
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks so much

Hey Dorrie

Try some Mucinex with some coricidan. The mucnes will help thin thet mucus out and the coricidan will help dry it up. Works well for me.
Plus the coricidan will not get you all revved up like sudafed. You can get both at the CVS or drugstore.

Also try in the morning to heat up a pot of water good and steaming and then put your head over with a towel on top. Be sure not to burn yourself.

Also salt water garlges help me.

P.S. Thought of you when I drove through ONtario to Michigan Did ya see me wave?

Thanks Shelley....and sorry for not waving back....I was too busy de-phlegming myself!!! Here is a wave for you todayHave you checked out the new social group yet....Weightloss and Healthy Living 2009!

I like to unclog some in shower, if cant stay in with very hot water..as I cant..I first run the shower total hot, so room steams up..then bring water temp to wahat my body can take..due to other sxs... and then I will try to breath in the steam. But also sounds funny, but I will put face up to water spray...and inhale some warm water into nose each side at a time, then blow out gently...feels wierd but it declogs the nose a bit, then also steam seems to help the lower stuff.

It is a good sign it is comign out I believe though, so hang in there..hugss,sarah

It was pneumonia that 'gave' me my severe PN! I had it for over two months!
The phlegm thing? Yeah, understand, you cough or blow yer nose and then check the color and quality of the stuff! If there were only some way we could make a commercial GLUE out of it we'd be rich! NO? Durn it? We all could USE to be RICH!
Watch the humidity level where you live and work, super dry makes more gunk. Steamy showers are good, but I often take a lite dish towel or wash cloth and keep it near my head when I sleep or at home, sort of a micro-environment? Seems to help and keep the pressures on the sinuses down.
I've not tried the Mucinex, tho maybe I should? But I've found that taking decongestants can help...OR can just make the gunk thicker. Pick your choice? Try things, whatever works is GOOD, discard the rest!
Just don't be more than three feet from a Kleenex box! Hopeing it clears up soon! 's and Lots of GOOD thoughts! - j

A pot of earl grey tea helps me a lot. Plus having someone pound on your back with your head lower than your waist. Make sure they cup their hand when they do it. To much humidity is not good either.

Hope you feel better.

I have second hand smoke damage to my lungs. I have lost approx. 20% capacity. I have sputum production 24/7 now.

You might want to have your lungs checked. They found my problems while I was at the National Jewish Hospital in Denver last year.

Nothing really helps much, I just buy tissues by the case.

Good luck....

Wow, I was startled to read that you attribute your PN to pneumonia. In a way, so do I. When I was quite young I kept getting pneumonia and appendicitis attacks at the same time, so they couldn't operate because I couldn't breathe well enough to survive anesthetic.

Okay, but here's the thing, I eventually had so much penicillin that I became allergic to it and had to have sulfa drugs with it... which, decades later, made me alert to an article I read on how sulfa drugs change our gastrointestinal chemistry if not fauna and how after that you may not ever have enough hydrochloric acid production again.

I think that's what happened for me, and it didn't really matter a lot while I was young and there was no stress. But later, that's when it began to impact my life HUGELY.

So, do you think it could have been the medicine, rather than the disease, that caused your PN? I'm really interested in what you think.

Hi Dorrie,
I sure understand about not being able to sleep with the phlegm problem.

I find that vitamin A taken before I go to sleep reduces how much I have.

In terms of infection, I keep infections at bay by using vitamin C in rather large doses, which is fine as long as you don't have diabetes and a certain gene. But, curiously, if I take a lot of vitamin C when I don't really need it I get phlegm from taking it. I find that astonishing.

This does seem to be an issue, particularly in the winter that can go on, and on, and on....... I hope things are abating somewhat.

Consider This? I really don't think the anti-b's contributed to the PN per-se. I think that it was just such a long-term infection that my immune system programming went whacko. I was on 2-3 different anti-b's and it WAS a bacterial infection. I'd always had 'colds' as a kid thru adult and pneumonia only once before in my life; none lasting more than a week-ten days. I consider myself fortunate in that respect as I was pretty durn 'healthy' before that pneumonia! By that I mean, regular annual check-ups and everything was always disgustingly normal.

Honestly I would have preferred a penicillin type med at the time! While I'm allergic to SULFUR taken internally, SULFA is OK...apparently there is a chemical difference of only a couple of molecules and those seem to make all the difference. Some docs don't seem to understand this distinction in the chemistry....I do, and, I'm chemistry impaired!

In my case, I think it was the 'illness' combined with the liklihood of a cancer 'hatching' that set things off. Ironically, in the few years I've had the PN etc., Cancer is now being considered an 'IMMUNE" disease. Throw that into the mix and all possibilities change in terms of figuring things out.

Hate to scare folks? But I've been told that cancer[s] can be developing [I call it hatching] for 5-7 years before any real signs are found... To make things more awkward, testing-IF done- won't always show a 'positive' for it.

Our docs do the best they can [IF you have good ones] with what you tell them and what they can do for the symptoms. I really think it's up to US to do our homework and connect the dots-if they can be connected. Not that it matters after damage is done.

That is why NT is such a super resource for all of us! It gets us talking across medical problems lines and know that a-we aren't alone and b-we share a lot of the same problems!

Next time I get hint's of Pneu? I KNOW you all will hear from me! In that RED-ALERT state we all seem to get into when such stuff happens! Hugs and hope to all! - j