@blm1007blm1007 Yes, much of my sleep is interrupted with gunk moving up and a need to hack. I don't neb immediately in the AM, instead, I make a decent breakfast and take a mucinex, which doesn't work immediately; I can eat in peace without coughing. Then at 11ish I do the nebulizer and vest. Coughing or huffing after this starts to become productive - but it's just the clear stuff the nebbing deposited and not my daily pooling thicker stuff - yet.
As the day goes on, and as I walk, do errands etc - that effort brings up mucus. I have a constant need to clear/huff into a tissue during waking hours. By 9pm I take a mucinex and do the second neb set and vest. By 11:30 I begin sleep in my recliner because I know a lot of mucus is coming. It must be the lying down or the relaxing that triggers the day's pool of deeper, darker mucus to begin moving. I have to clear this stuff for an hour and a half, meaning, while I drift off. I feel the obstruction (cough and hack up, repeat, many times) before any hopes of sleep. Eventually, I move to my bed, but the gathering of the sticky stuff continues to move into my main airway for the next couple hours, at least. It feels distressing when it's trapped there. When I get it out it's a quarter size glob of sticky grey or brown stuff. It's probably 20 -30 repeats of this gathering glob, hacking and hocking. No "gentle huffing" (what you learn in airway clearance class) is going to get this thick sticky crud out - when your airway is obstructed - your body responds as nature intended. This cycle is repeated over and over, from 11pm-2am, and then less often from 2am until morning, because if I'm lucky, by that time I'm sleeping. I certainly can't sleep with my husband because of this, and I'm even worried about keeping the people up in the townhome next door. Like you, Barbara, I am resentful about the life-limiting nature of this disease and the time spent for self-care, when we could be having some fun. I can't really be around other people and go to gatherings for fear of catching something, like I did in the spring. I'm happy to have my spouse to be with, and we watch out for each other, but I also have to adjust my schedule to his needs (diabetic, meals, etc), so I can't easily re-adjust my patterns. My only ME time is the morning. I was hoping that the Big 3 and Brinsupri would cut down on the volume of production, but not yet. I'm afraid to give up any of the treatment, because of what the consequences may be.