Oh Ina, that is so miserable. There have been many suggestions over time on dealing with the nausea, ginger capsules, candies or tea helped me. And lots of water.. Also, I ate something every hour, a small piece of fruit, an ounce of cheese, a few crackers,
half of a proteindrink. . Also, taking the meds at bedtime allowed me to sleep through the worst of the nausea.

One bit of curiosity, typically treatment starts with antibiotics 3x per week. Did the doctor explain why they were prescribed daily?

I wish you luck finding a strategy that works for you.
Sue

Ina, you said, " I don't understand what the nebulizing 7% saline is but am trying to find it on the internet." I'm not the Internet but here's an Okie's take on why it tends to be favored among MAC sufferers. People who know about such things tell us that although lower concentrations of saline are helpful to the extent that they thin mucous which presumably facilitates coughing it up, However, when the concentration reaches 7% it not only thins, but also becomes lethal to mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) infections. Which is most likely the reason a few years ago after switching to 7% from a lower concentration of saline, my Pulmo (for the first time) following a chest X-ray, told me that the radiologist reported that the MAC infection had diminished in size compared to an earlier X-ray.

Ina, sadly, even pulmonologists with many years of pulmo experience are not well informed about treatment and maintenance guidelines for bronchiectasis and MAC. These are both very rare conditions (according to some studies, as rare as 1 in 2,000 people and 1 in 3,300, respectively), so the average community doctor doesn't see a large volume of patients with such 'orphan diseases. I ended having to go to National Jewish and, believe me, it was a real eye opener.

Airway clearance is recommended for management of bronchiectasis by the American Thoracic Society, so I find it bewildering that so many pulmonologists are oblivious to guidelines set by their *own* professional organizations. I had never heard of it until I went to NJH and when I subsequently asked my community pulmonologist for a refill script, he looked at me with puzzlement as though I'd asked him for ride on a unicorn. He had literally never heard of 7% saline nebulization for management of bronch. and I had to explain the concept to HIM! Prior to NJH, I had also gone to Mayo and no one there had mentioned it either.

I recommend that you watch all the NTM videos on the NJH youtube channel. You will come out being orders of magnitude more informed about NTM than your average community pulmonologist, guaranteed. Also, if you can manage a trip up to NJH, I highly recommend it. It's best to go to a national center that deals with thousands of NTM cases per year, than a community pulmonologist who has perhaps seen less than half a dozen cases in his/her entire medical career.