I was originally doing this as a blog post, but thought again. I am not an expert.

I'm having what I think may be allergies, but may be the beginnings of a cold. Every time I go to sleep, I fear that I will one day wake up coughing blood, or have my esophagus (spelling?) burst while I'm sleeping and not know what I just did. In fact, whenever the "cough coming" feeling comes I fear this will happen. Even worse, I sometimes even believe the esophagus will scratch and form the equivalent of a cut on the skin, but since it is sensitive in there, I think of the metallic, frightening, horrendous taste that I will sense when blood runs up my esophagus into my throat when I am laying down one day, or the foreign feeling that will come when the liquid that I drink seeps out of my esophagus due to the cut in there. I ponder on the pain that I will feel, and what my cold turns into.

I started to cough one day and I thought I will get a bad ache and sore in my throat if I cough where I usually and naturally do, and I wouldn't get at the phlegm that my body tries to cough out. So I tried fake-coughing, as I usually do when the allergy season comes, only I tried something different. I tried to cough deep in my esophagus, and not in my throat, where the phlegm originates. So I did this, and I kept doing it and doing it, and it became routine, sort of like an addiction. My esophagus began to ache, which made it harder to treat because it is invisible by just looking at it with a flashlight unless my clavicle gets sawed in two and then it becomes visible (but it won't matter then, anyway). Some sore throat spray was bought for me and I used it, but this is not a sore throat. It hurts in the mid-esophageal region and I don't know any "spray" that would treat it. I keep coughing low, because I've gotten used to that action. It hurts me and coughing is also natural, so there is no way that I know of to stop it. Is there anyone that can help me here?

--Jonas Rand