Hi guys,
A short backstory: For the past month I've been on several different sets of antibiotics for several different things, which has really been stressing me out. The main one I've been worried about is bronchitis, which all started when I coughed up some grey/black phlegm which I knew wasn't right, I've been on 2 sets of antibiotics for it already.
Which brings me to this point. I'm still noticing little bits of black phlegm here and there even after all these antibiotics. I'm trying my hardest to convince myself that it's probably just remnants of the infection and that it'll probably clear up soon and the doctor even said it should clear up within a week, but I'm still stressing over it almost constantly. I'm coughing on purpose every so often just to check if there's any black phlegm, and 99% of the time there isn't but then I'll cough up a tiny bit and get thrown right back into the loop. There have been at least 4 times in the past few weeks where I've gone "I'm finally getting better!" only to see more black phlegm and get worried again.
The thought that keeps popping up in my head is "what if it's lung cancer?" because I stupidly googled the symptoms, and of course one of the things that popped up about black phlegm is that it could be a sign of lung cancer. I smoked weed pretty often for around two years or so but stopped smoking it a few weeks before the black phlegm popped up and haven't touched it since, so now I'm worried sick that maybe the smoking has lead to lung cancer. I'm regretting ever smoking anything at all and am pretty confident that even if it ends up just being bronchitis I will never smoke again or at the very least very very occasionally.
On my last visit to the doctors, they also took my pulse and my blood pressure, both of which they said were high, which has got me worrying about that stuff too which isn't helping.
I've had Health Anxiety for over a year now, but this time it's different. Before I'd have imagined symptoms that I couldn't actually see, but this time with the black phlegm I can actually see the symptom, which stresses me out even more.
If there is anyone with any knowledge of bronchitis (nurses, doctors, people who have had bronchitis before) and could shed some light on what might be happening or maybe share similar experiences they've had, that could really help me out. I think at this point I'll wait maybe 1 or 2 more days and if I still see black phlegm I'll go in for the chest x-ray.
Thankyou
