gross, but it's what's occupying my attention

Every time I have trouble breathing, it hurts. As I mentioned, I learned that I'd been kept alive by an ex-doctor who had performed CPR on me until the paramedics arrived. While I'm eternally thankful to this mysterious individual, I'm also pissed that he left me in such agonizing pain: every hitch, every cough, every spasm or pre-spastic hesitation, leaves me clutching my chest and squeezing my eyes shut. Assuming this is only a 2 on the torture scale, I'd be confessing my deepest secrets by the time I reached a 1.5.

A lot of the spasming was and is coming from the buildup of mucus in my lungs, but as I discovered last night when I triumphantly hawked a wad out, it was a big, nasty, dark mass of filth that had been building up somewhere in my bronchii. The simultaneous relief and triumph that I felt as I pushed past my pain, contracted my agonized chest muscles, and shoved the loogie out of myself were amazing. I felt great until the morning, an almost post-coital gratification at having birthed this demon-baby. Alas, it was easily twice the size of the critter in the pic below, and in my moment of bliss, I neglected to capture an image, so it will have to pass on into legend as The One That Got Away. It was bigger, darker, and meaner than the loogie you see below. 

a couple inches across

I guess the cycle is now this: (1) build up a huge loogie over several hours, feeling it grow slowly and cause tiny spasms that can explode into bigger spasms as it blocks my airway temporarily; (2) start spasming more painfully as the cataclysm approaches; (3) finally hawk out the monster and feel immense relief for a few hours while the cycle starts all over again. It's not a pleasant cycle, and half of it is pure discomfort, but there are signs of progress: a smaller loogie today than yesterday's, no new loogie as of yet (I wrote too soon—one is forming now), etc. Maybe the cycle is losing its force. There's always next week. I'll check in with you then.