Can I really cough up a lung?

Last Saturday, I set aside the entire day to be sick. The previous week I could feel Sickness stalking me, hiding in the dark alleyways when I turned quickly to catch him out. (sorry- I just feel sickness has to be a him.) Finally I said, “Okay fine. Saturday is yours”. So I stayed in bed, finishing two very fine books, and let sickness wash over me. So, since I had made a fair deal with Sickness, I naively assumed he would keep his end of the bargain. I was shocked to wake up on Sunday feeling like crap. I shouted at Sickness and told him he was very untrustworthy and it appears that he didn’t appreciate that and has bewitched me with a huge fat cough. A constant stupid cough that keeps me awake at 2 in the morning so that I write strange incoherent emails to my friend in America, that keeps me coughing so I can’t do my edits on the science textbook, but, strangely, allows me to write this blog. Hmmmm?????? Very sneaky this Sickness.

So in the middle of all of this coughing I thought, “Could I really cough up a lung?’"It appears that is a question on quite a few people’s minds because I googled and got 3,810,000 sites that pertain to it. I got my answer at Askville.com. A helpful poster named Pam Perdue had this to say:

Your lungs are kind of glued to the inside of your chest. That's your rib muscles are able to help expand them. By the time you managed to work an entire lung separated from the rib muscle, you wouldn't be able to cough it out (and you'd be dead a few moments later anyway). I suppose if your lungs were truly rotten a small piece might fall into one of your bronchioles and be coughed out. But at that point your lungs would be full of all sorts of other goop and you wouldn't notice much of anything.

Thanks Pam! That is very comforting. (cough, cough, cough…..)