Hi everyone, I am posting for the first time though have been reading this chat site since I was diagnosed with MAC this past July. I had had symptoms for about three years of the cough and shortness of breath during exertion but didn't go to a doctor until I was coughing up blood. The first doctor gave me Azithromycin and told me not to come back unless the cough persisted. Then i changed doctors. I have a good pulmonologist now who has been treating me with an inhaler of salmeterol/fluticasone powder and an emergency inhaler of advair (which I rarely use). Recently, I felt the coughing had lessened somewhat as I began eating a anti-inflammatory diet (i.e., get rid of all the things you like), one of the components of which is celery which supposedly reverses inflammation. My doctor doesn't seem to want to treat me with the antibiotics; I guess because my symptoms don't bother me enough to be worth it. However, a week ago, I became suddenly aware I was coming down with something, felt like a flu, began to be achey, got a fever and a headache and my cough became worse and really chronic (productive - tons of green sputum), I stayed in bed the next day and the next and the next figuring it was a long-lasting flu. But the cough continued to the point where I asked my doctor to prescribe me some hydrocodone so I could sleep. This worked the first two nights, but now the cough continues no matter if I take a tspn of the cough medicine or not. When I went to see my doctor to get the prescription (day 3), she did a flu test and said, "well, it's not the flu." She said to call if I didn't improve by day 5. I continued to have cough plus low fever (100 and 101.5) so I got a script for Azithromycin (today is day 2 of 5 days), and fever is gone but I still feel this rawness (as if someone was blowing an icy wind down my throat) in my esophagus and I have a constant cough reflex, still productive, but less so. Then I wondered, maybe when you catch a virus and you already have an infection, could the infection get worse? Does anyone have experience of getting a virus, flu, or cold while not being treated for MAC? Thanks, and sorry to be so long-winded. Wanting to know if I'll ever be able to breathe normally again.

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