"Do you cough regularly most days" ? Yes - 38% No - 62% "Do you get mucus coughed up" ? Yes - 33% No - 67% "Do you lose your breath more often than others of the same age"? Yes - 36% No - 64% "Are you older than 45 years?" Yes - 36% No - 64% "Are you a smoker or an ex-smoker?" Yes - 94%
So she started hacking and coughing suddenly, gasping for air and almost choking. It was easy to hear she had a load of plegm kicking around. Thens he began gaggin and after about 5 good heaves she did what I thought was puking into my empty waste basket. I looked down into it though and it was ALL plegm, no food or bile, just about 2 measuring cups at least of brownish plegm.
I've done this myself about twice, and its almost like my lungs are barfing. It sounds strange I'm sure, and feels odd to. lately my smokers cough is pretty dominant and moist, and I've frequently come very close to doing this. "
I had to walk out to my car to get some aspirin and when I walked out the back door of the office I nearly ran into one of the accountants. She is 35-40 with blonde hair and rather attractive. I looked down and notice an almost bent marlboro light hidden in her hand nearly crushed and a lighter in her other hand. I was about a half step behind her and was able to see what might have been one of the first lightups of her life. She took a drag, shallow inhale and blew it out. She works in a department where many people (unfortunatley mostly men) have started smoking after joining the group due to the high stress.
I came back from my car probably 35-40 seconds later to see her walking in with the almost whole cigarette left smoldering in the ashtray. I caught up to her and smelt that beautiful smell. As she walked away I heard her cough a couple time to clear her throat.
My mind won't stop running now. I am wondering where this 1 cigarette will lead her. I only hope I can witness the next one.
Man what a great sighting.
... suddenly her sister coughed - a violent cough which made
her chest almost cramp and gave her face dark red.
... they were only interrupted by her sister's coughing fits ...
... she tried to hold her cough back all the time...
... the sound of her cough penetrated the walls during the night ...
... as he once again heard her cough tear her chest apart ...
... he could hear her terrible coughing fits through the thin wall ...
"I heard something wild on the train today. There was a woman sitting behind me who clearly had a terrible cold. She was on the phone with her boyfriend, describing how miserable she felt and how he had been right, she should have stayed home. She frequently broke off in the middle of sentences to cough, wetly and with force, usually in groups of three. She would cough one very fast, rattling triple, suck in a quick breath, and then cough another much slower triple. It always sounded like there were more coming; the end was just as thick and wet as the beginning. Then she'd sniff, clear her throat, and continue in the conversation where she'd left off.
Here's the wild bit: she'd apparently had a particuarly intense fit earlier at work. She told her boyfriend that she had been walking to the water cooler for a drink when it hit, and that she had just kept coughing, faster and faster until she was really fighting for air. She said that she "finally managed to cough something up", but while it was still in her mouth, had unintentionally "breathed in really hard", I presume like in between her triples on the train, to fuel more coughing. She said that she "sucked the phelgm right back in and started to choke" and that "for a second, couldn't breathe at all". She then coughed it up again, with what she described as "these totally disgusting, bone-rattling coughs", right into the palm of her hand. She said that she thought she was going to throw up. Whatever her boyfriend said in response led her to say that of course she shouldn't have called him, and that she wasn't about to make him drive all the way to Cambridge to pick her up when the train was running just fine. And that all this talking was making her naseous, and that she'd see him soon. She hung up, and got off at the next stop.
She sucked it back in! While I'll admit that's a little gross even for me, it was so unique I just had to share it with you all."
Sharon writes: Since this is the lung damage board I thought maybe it was time I talked a little about some of that. Does anyone else have fits of what I call choking coughs? This is different from the normal day long hacking and clearing my throat. The choking coughs just come on suddenly, without any warning. I will just take a drag like always and go to inhale when it suddently feels like my lungs won't accept the smoke, feels like I am choking and then I just start to cough and cough and cough. Even drinking something doesn't seem to help, the choking feeling won't go away and I just keep coughing and coughing, tears running down my face. Its a little scarey when it happens. Fortunately its not something that happens too often, maybe two to three times a week and almost always late in the day. I wonder if at times my throat just gets totally dried out from the smoke?
And further: Usually I get at least one cold a year and I just dread them. It always seems to go right to my chest and I know I am in for a good week or so of really hard, frequent coughing. Yet even coughing my lungs out isn't enough to get me to cut down and I just keep on smoking heavily. I guess that is pretty pathetic.
And: I guess what is considered weird is in the eyes of the beholder. I mean lots of folks would think it weird to see me have a really hard coughing fit and yet as soon as I stop coughing, place my cigarette between my lips, take a long hard drag and inhale deep. There is no way I can make them understand that even in spite of the coughing, filling my lungs with more smoke still feels good to me.
Some reply postings:
Katey:
I have that sometimes too. Sometimes I cough until I'm almost sick. It's one of the less
pleasant aspects of smoking so much I guess. I certainly don't enjoy it, but it
only happens once a wek at most.
Christine: I have had coughs like that. usually occurs in the morning for me though when my chest feels tight from a lack of smoke while i sleep. like yourself they are not all that frequent. iv noticed it usually happens as i go to exhale, feels like my lungs lock up for a moment.that sets off a coughing fit that leaves me breathless but on the bright side at least the coughing works out our tummys.
"My persistent hackings grew to such coughing fits that I thought my chest would break"
"I have a friend who loves to hear about my smokers cough. This morning I am feeling a bit rattle chested, having gone out last night having a few more then a few drinks and smoking MASSIVE amounts. While walking my dog this morning I sprinted around half my block and OMG was coughing, all the while holding a cigarette. I know this does not appeal to just anyone but I can still confess I almost enjoyed the experiance. My lungs at these times heaving just to get air, struggling at best. I too have a smoking fetish, being the smoker I can enjoy many if not all aspects of being a smoker."
"I have started to get a smokers cough yes. Not terribly persistant but enough to notice. Mostly in the mornings and late in the evenings before bed. I always say oh one more cigarette and before I know it I've smoked another 4-5 before bed. It seems I always have time for yet another cigarette. I tend to be walking around my house doing various little things, tiding up, walking my dog and such before bed. When I am doing it I don't realize I am practically chain smoking. As soon as I wake up I light a cigarette, something I had never done until recent few years. I used to not have one until I was on my way to work. "
My 16-year old daughter has a persistent dry cough that will not stop. She gets this cough anytime she gets a cold, or the flu. After she gets over the illness, the cough lingers on. This phenomenon started back when she was about 9 years old. It is a small, non-producing cough. And she coughs about every 2-3 minutes. We have tried OTC remedies such as Robitussin with Dextromethorphan and it just barely helps, but it never gets rid of the cough or heals the cough.
About 4 years ago, a Dr. gave her a prescription cough syrup that had hydrocodone and guaifenisin in it. This has been the only thing that actually stopped the cough and eventually made it completely go away. She is allergic to codeine (it makes her nauseous), but she was usually able to tolerate the small amount of cough syrup without getting sick. However, she had a bad experience taking Ultram and Ultracet this past winter for 3 months, and evidently she is now highly allergic to codeine and anything closely related to it -- hydrocodone.
So, now, I have not been able to find anything that can help her. We have been to 2 doctors locally. One Dr. gave her Benzonatate which hasn't helped. The 2nd doctor recommended an Albuterol inhaler. We tried that for a few days. The cough became much worse; where it had been just a light cough in her upper throat, it now became a very deep cough much like bronchitis -- as if she had a lot of loose stuff in her chest. However, she still wasn't coughing up anything. They did test her also for strep throat as her throat is very sore from all the coughing. The test was negative. She discontinued using the inhaler as she felt it was just making everything worse.
So, now we are back to the Robitussin D, and a steam vaporizer at night, but as I said, it is only partially masking the cough, it is not getting better. She is allergic to codeine, morphine, Ultram/Ultracet, and sulfa drugs. I don't understand what it was in the prescription medicine of hydrocodone and guaifenisin that worked? If anyone has any suggestions or can help, please e-mail me.
Thank you,
xxx
These are the 2 things that turn me on about smoking ladies. Love to hear a phlegm laden laugh on a girl or a deep smokers cough!!
Answer:
Ah... nothing sexier than a very heavy smoker with her hand on her large tits taking a much needed drag and then coughing the smoke in a deep rumble out of those black lungs. Then taking another drag of course and then telling you what a bad "cold" she has! Damn sexy. Light another baby! PLEASE don't stop!
Yet another follow-up posting to the same thread:
A woman with a "smoker's laugh," or "smoker's cough" instantly turns me on, too.
I think of the millions of deep drags that have they have enjoyed sucking deep
into their lungs. I don't like a hacking cough, just that single, deep, wet cough,
characteristic of heavy smokers. They don't really want to cough anything up,
but just rearrange the tar in their lungs.
First is Kaity Tong, whose voice is the prototypical smoker's voice. Second is Sukanya Krishnan who not only has a similar voice but occasionally lets a smoker's cough out while on-air. These two have to be smokers - I can't think of any other women newscasteers whose voices are so obviously seasoned by smoke.
I know two women who are both fairly heavy smokers (pack and a half a day). They are both in their late 30's and fairly attractive. Both have what I would believe to be smokers coughs. Although, their coughs are quite different. The first lady, a strawberry blond with blue eyes, marlboro reds smoker, has a very raspy voice and coughs quite a bit. Her cough sounds dry though, and although you can hear quite a bit of rattling and on occasion a slight rumble, her cough sounds very dry. The second lady, a sandy blond with green eyes, marlboro mediums 100's smoker, no raspy voice, doesn't cough too much (not nearly as much as the redhead), mainly the first thing in the morning cough. When she coughs her cough is very rumbly and wet sounding, like a slight phlegmlike sound shifting or coming up. She has also admitted that sometimes in the morning when she has coughed she has a bit of phlegm come up. What is the difference between these two women smokers and their coughs? which one has the worse cough? Which ones lungs might be in worse shape?
An answer posted: I don't know which one has the worst lungs, but I have found the second type of cough to be more common, especially with women who smoke high-tar cigarettes and like to hold the smoke in their lungs for an extended period of time before exhaling. Usually it is a single, very rumbly cough, with just enough energy to rearrange the tar accumulated from those hundreds of deep, satisfying inhales that she needs and enjoys each day. These are the coughs that really turn me on! :-)
Well, it's kinda hard to say what the longest fit hs been. I mean I cough so much that I don't keep track of time, mostly I just try to stop and breath. Once or twice a day I have to have someone give me a chest compression treatment, where someoen has to pound on my chest and upper back to loosen mucus from my lungs, which I then have to cough up, or else I will drown in mucus.
As for regular fits, usually they worst ones are at night. I sleep elevated, but sometimes I will roll over and lay on my back, and if that happenes I usually wake up coughing. Now the wort time is when I catch a cold or something like that becuase it makes things wrse all around. In my worst fits, I will cough for at least 20 minutes pretty much continuousy, and will often spit up the mucus into a sink or something like it. One of the dangers I have to deal with is having my lung collapse, which has happened to me at least 5 times.
What Do You Do with Your Mucus?
This story is strictly for people with cystic fibrosis,
since they are the ones that can only truly understand.
Have you ever had to cough and had to spit out your mucus
but you didn't have a tissue? This is what I used to do.
I would spit it out on my hand and then swallow it again.
Somehow that didn't bother me. But this is what my roommate ,
Jess, use to do. She would spit it out on her hand but instead
of swallowing it, she would put it in her pocket! So which one
is worse? Got a good story? I'd love to hear about it!
The following answer was posted by Kathleen when asked "Does it occur frequently that you need to cough it up and out?":
"Fairly so. Definitely in the morning when I awake, anytime I
do something physical,
and throughout the day, but in a
non-predictable way."
Reply:
Hi! I'm 34 yrs old. I have had these "coughing
attacks" and I'll
explain them and hope that I don't sound too gross...!
It feels to me that
it is caused by stringy mucus sticking in my throat that
I can't get up and
out because it's a long "string" from my throat down into
my airway. It
starts as a tickle, I start to cough, then I can't stop
coughing, my face
turns beat red, my eyes are tearing, and often it ends
only after I have
gagged it out ; other times I guess my
coughing "breaks" it and
the coughing spasm stops. It's especially fun when this
happens to me in a
public place (while in a store, walking downtown...real
examples!)
It must be scary hearing such a cough, and I've heard
people telling not
to pat people on the
back if they are
choking, as long as they are still getting air in (making
noises); I don't
know if this rule would apply to choking on mucus.
I usually swallow it, which is not
tasty but okay, and at least it will be out of my lungs
& throat."
From a CF (Cystic Fibrosis) discussion
I think it can happen for me at different times. It
feels like an
irritant, so I cough, but there's actually
stuff in my lungs too, so I
can't stop. And it moves it into just the right place
where you can't
stop until it's out. It also happens to me when I loosen
a mucous
plug. The first time this happened to me, I was about 15,
walking
around a shopping plaza. I couldn't stop coughing, but it
wasn't a
breathing problem at all, just felt like a tickle in
my throat. I
coughed and coughed, then it stopped for awhile. Then
it started up
again, then stopped. Finally, around 6:30, I was sitting
in my living
room, it started again, and this time I felt this hard
little round
thing in my mouth. I spat it out, and it was a brown
piece of old
mucous, very small, almost like (don't think I'm gross)
a booger. Well,
I guess once it got up into the large airways, it was
moving around a
lot and tickling me every time I breathed. Also, when you
get out a
mucous plug, all the stuff behind it gets set loose, so
you may cough up more mucous.
This was a reply to:
Meg has been having a HUGE cough the last couple of weeks,
she has
some very fluid mucus in her lung.
My question is her cough. It starts with a tickle and
then finally
comes up... her whole body is shaken by the cough.
In the past she has only had dry, reactive, non-productive
coughs. Now, her mucus has actually become fluid enough
to move....and now it can
get a bit overwhelming. After these coughs she really
clears out and can
breath nicely until it builds again....I can clearly hear
the lung rattles change from many to very few."
CF (Cystic Fibrosis) discussion
Hello everyone, I was wondering if anyone on this list has ever sprained or injured their lower back because of coughing. Last Thursday I was walking on the treadmill and I started coughing and all of a sudden I had extreme pain stabbing me in the lower back."
Russia's High-Tar Tasters Live and Breathe Cigarettes by ROBYN DIXON / Times Staff Writer Source: Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, 7/19/00 YELETS, Russia--Through waxy red lips, Larissa Solovyova expels a heavy cloud of acrid-smelling smoke, which wafts like a small thundercloud by her face. She thrusts her nose into the smoke, sniffing heavily, her face stern with concentration. She says it takes years of practical smoking classes at Russia's main tobacco university to learn to smoke correctly. Even after five years of study there, her palate was green and inexperienced. Solovyova, 45, takes another pull on one of Russia's roughest cigarettes, dubbed papirosi, inhaling for so long that the end flares brightly. "You just breathe it in as deeply as possible into your lungs," she says. "This is the final inhalation, to see how strong it is." Solovyova isn't smoking for pleasure. It is the most important part of her job. She and four other members of the Yelets tobacco factory "degustation committee" take their work--as quality barometers of high-tar cigarettes--seriously. "I've been smoking 48 years, and I never tried to quit. All my conscious life has been devoted to this," says the committee chairman, Anatoly Topekha. "He taught me everything I know," Solovyova says humbly. "He taught me to memorize the flavor specifics of each tobacco and the sensory perceptions that a smoker has while smoking. It's a complicated process." The pair have matching smokers' coughs, barking into their hands from time to time. Solovyova and Topekha are testing Belomorkanal papirosi, made of fifth-grade tobacco. No one in Russia is making papirosi of lower-grade tobacco than Belomorkanal, a big seller for the Yelets factory, which makes 5 billion papirosi and other cigarettes a year. Papirosi are peculiarly Russian, popular among the poor, prisoners and soldiers. Instead of a filter, each one has a long hollow cardboard tube that smokers squash flat at both ends before lighting up. Even as cigarette sales decline in the United States, Russians smoke 265 billion cigarettes annually--about 1,800 per capita--and the figure is expected to rise 1% to 1.5% this year. Smoking is much more common among men than women, although young women, particularly in Moscow, are taking up smoking in increasing numbers. Among men ages 30 to 34, 72% smoke, and 59.8% of males older than 15 smoke. The comparable figure for females older than 15 is 9.1%. In mortality rates for cardiovascular disease, cancer and infectious diseases, Russia ranks second highest in the world among 140 countries, behind Hungary. Another former Soviet bloc country, Latvia, is in third place. Last year, 63,092 Russians died of lung or throat cancer, and health authorities blame 90% of the cases on smoking. In the same year, 2,355,658 died of cardiac disease, and 25% of these fatalities are blamed on smoking. Not deterred, Solovyova's committee meets every Thursday at 2 p.m. in this town 220 miles south of Moscow to smoke for one to two hours, randomly testing all the factory's products and all the raw tobacco to be used in production. The papirosi and filterless cigarettes that the company turns out have very high tar levels. For its Prima cigarettes, the level is 22 milligrams of tar per cigarette. There is no regulation in Russia governing the amount of tar in papirosi such as Belomorkanal. The committee members couldn't say how much tar the papirosi had but acknowledged that it's harder to reduce the tar in them. While Western cigarette companies also have regular panel samplings of cigarettes for subjective values such as taste, their products are much lower in tar, often around the 12-milligram mark or lower, and they use machines rather than the Russian deep inhalation method to test for strength. Typically, testers don't smoke raw tobacco samples, as the Russian panels do. "It is hard when we are tasting for more than an hour," Solovyova says. "Sometimes we take a 10-minute break to revive." The committee members avoid spicy foods on Thursdays and drink weak black tea at testing sessions to refresh their exhausted palates. Topekha insists that the work isn't harmful and doesn't lead to disease because "tobacco leaves the body very quickly." "According to the latest research from the Academy of Medical Science [in Russia], tobacco is useful for your body in certain quantities," he asserts. "Tar is hazardous, but nicotine is not." Belomorkanal papirosi were launched in 1933 to commemorate the opening of the White Sea-Baltic Sea canal, a project Russians today associate with the 300,000 gulag prisoners who died building it. Solovyova, who says her salary is a commercial secret, is the chief tobacco engineer at the factory and, when she isn't smoking, is responsible for quality control of papirosi and cigarettes, labels and boxes. She takes her job so seriously that even off duty she smokes only Yelets tobacco factory products: Belomorkanal papirosi, Prima cigarettes made of fourth-grade tobacco and Yeletskiye filter cigarettes. Smoking the product full time, she says, improves her work on the degustation committee. Although she says she tried her first papirosi secretly when she was 7 and found it repugnant, she took up smoking seriously when she began her studies at the tobacco institute. During the degustation, committee members remain silent, scoring each item on detailed sheets for flavor, bitterness, acidity, the degree of irritation to the throat, the burning sensation on and around the tongue and other qualities. Although the Yelets tobacco factory experienced some difficulties in the transition to a market economy, production has increased since the collapse of the Soviet Union--despite the invasion by Western companies that have surged into Russia, investing in many local tobacco factories or setting up their own operations. "Not everybody has the chance to smoke expensive products," Topekha says. "Lots of people are extremely poor but can't quit smoking." The company's heyday was in the 1960s, when the factory products were in heavy demand on the black market and security at the plant had to be tightened to prevent theft. Anatoly Berezhnov, 69, a pensioner and former cowherd from the village of Tishanka, 325 miles southeast of Moscow, is a typical Belomorkanal smoker. "You either eat meat or potatoes," he says of his smoking habit, comparing Western cigarettes to meat--often too expensive for many Russians--and Belomorkanal to potatoes. He took up smoking out of boredom when he was 30 and working as a cowherd, with nothing to do but stare at cattle all day. His daily pack costs him 2 rubles, or 7 cents, but popping down to the local shop to buy the cheapest brand makes him feel rich, "because tobacco is a very difficult plant to grow. It's very hard to raise your own tobacco and cure it and roll your own cigarettes." Berezhnov has his first daily papirosi before breakfast, "and it's good. If I didn't smoke, I'd probably live for a hundred years, but I'll probably live 10 or 15 years less than that," he says lightly. Five years ago, Berezhnov managed to give up vodka on his doctor's advice, but he finds it much harder to quit smoking. Like many of the factory's clients, Solovyova has been trying to cut down. "I think the health of the nation is the key thing, but our task as producers is to make cigarettes that will cause as little harm as possible to people," says Solovyova, despite the high tar levels in the factory's cigarettes. Sounding a little prim, she adds that people should limit their intake, suggesting that less than 10 a day would be a reasonable level, though she herself smokes double that. But in the next breath comes a rueful admission: "I'm trying to reduce the number, but it's really hard." By now she is coughing heavily. In the United States, major tobacco companies have suffered legal setbacks in recent years, most stunningly on Friday, when jurors ordered cigarette makers to pay $144.8 billion in punitive damages to Florida smokers who became sick or died as a result of addiction to cigarette smoking. But Solovyova and Topekha are certain that Russian manufacturers will never have to face that problem. "It might happen in America. It would never happen here," Topekha says. "In America there are more rights for consumers than there are here."