For years now, most winters I've had a cold that was then followed by a bacterial chest infection which in turn triggered inflammation of the airways, causing mucus production, that my doctor says is caused by my asthma.
Normally my asthma is well controlled, and I don't get this inflammation and mucus, just the ordinary constricting of the airways - it's only the bacterial infection that seems to trigger this other condition.
Sometimes it goes by itself, after many weeks, but usually I need a course of steroids.
This year, for the first time, I've got it in summer, and it's far worse than it's ever been - after a week or more on steroids, I'm no better. But why I'm writing this, at 5am, is because at 2.30am I awoke with mucus clogging my windpipe, and I was really frightened I was going to die. It needed as much breath in my lungs as possible to generate a cough strong enough to force the mucus out, but of course, I couldn't breathe enough to get the air into my lungs in the first place. I was thrashing about my bedroom, desperately trying to force the stuff out and get some air in. Finally it came, but only little by little.
The exact same thing happened to me through the night four days ago.
When the mucus does come, there's not much of it, only about a teaspoonful. It's the stickiness of the mucus that makes it so hard to cough up, not the amount. I've asked the doctor for a drug to make the mucus less sticky, but she said the only drugs that do this take a long time to act.
I saw my doctor yesterday about this, and I'm being sent for a chest X-ray, but I'm really worried about this happening again. So my question is, can you choke to death on mucus like this, or is this only an illusion caused by panic? What I mean is, if I really needed air, would my lungs suck in air strongly enough to push the mucus aside just enough to let the air past, even if it didn't shift the mucus away entirely? On both occasions, I was desperately using all the strength I could to get that mucus out, so I don't know what would have happened if I had just calmed down and trusted my lungs to get the air past the mucus.
So am I right to fear choking to death one night? I'd really appreciate people's opinions on this.