Has anyone had green mucus for over a year?

My experience is that when mucus is green it's been in the lungs longer than the yellow mucus. I would want to get that green stuff up and out and not wait for it to come out on its own. As lungs age, elasticity diminishes so we need to assist our lungs with breath holds, huffs, postural drainage, etc to remove the mucus. Your naps and exercise are postural drainage it seems.

If it were I, I would increase airway clearance to 2x day with a bronchodilator followed by 7% saline. Add mucinex 1200mg twice a day. Personally I like the brand name better than the generic; the generic did not seem as effective, perhaps it has to do with the timed release aspect.

Like you I've had bronchiectasis for awhile (no MAC/etc working hard daily to keep it that way). Sadly, back then we did not have the communities of other bronchiectasis sufferers that we have today. There were months, maybe years when I had daily green mucus. I did know then what we know now. Pulmonary doctors rarely encountered bronchiectasis. Finally, a standard of care for bronchiectasis has emerged with airway clearance at the top of the list. When my mucus begins to turn darker I know to up the clearance.

I just want to add that when I have green type mucus I think it is partly a result of allergies. I seem to have more green on allergy days but this is just a theory. I do know it does not always mean that you have an infection and that color is not a definitive indicator.

Thanks so much for your input. I will try the mucinex. I wish I had found this forum 10 years ago also. My Dr just diagnosed me here in FL and then never said another word about it so I didn't think it was serious. Then I started reading and that's when I found NJH.

Yeah, I know what you mean about finding info/treatments earlier. Good thing you found NJH. Since you've been researching I wanted to mention the Autogenic Drainage app. Have you used it? It really helps to keep me on task when lung clearance is the last thing I want to do!

I had green mucus begin to come up a good few years before I was diagnosed with BE in 2022. The PCDoctor thought nothing of it..."Not a big deal" type of reply. So things continued to get worse and finally due to my weight loss he did a C Scan. There you have it...BE. So far I have not had an exacerbation ( no fever, sweets, cold spells, etc. etc. etc. ) and have not been on antibiotics. I do have to do all we do for airway clearance etc. and do bring up yellow to clear mucus. My sputum has shown MAI and I am waiting for my May result. Something must be growing slowly.?

Thanks for your reply. I was always told green is bad, but who knows. Guess I will wait and see what happens. Will get another CT and sputum test in Oct.

I hope your test comes back negative. One of the worst parts of this disease is waiting on all the tests results.

No, I haven’t used it. Will definitely check it out. I have a hard time coughing it up in a sitting position. I get the best results with postural drainage.

Did you see this in another area? "Listen to Dr PJ McShane's Recent Talk on Airway Clearance!"
Posted by becleartoday @becleartoday, 1 day ago

Yes i do periodically. The green mucous could be other bacteria which should be identified by a sputum culture.
I had yellow and green mucous before I was dx with BE or MAC.

I have green mucus most of the time. I do have pseudomonas but my doctor isn’t concerned about the green mucus either.