Well, really I guess pretty much everything I post here should go OT now since the doc reversed their opinion of copd on my most recent xray and he way way jumped the gun in the first place but I just want to share this with the friends I've made here.

First off, I finally seem to be rounding the corner from the lung infection/inflammation I had about 6 weeks ago, which was almost certainly compounded by my quitting smoking at the same time. The chest pains are almost completely gone now, as is most of the occasional constricting feeling I was having in my chest, like someone had me in a bear hug, gone as well is the feeling I had most often when seated or driving, that my chest was heavy and hard to move. I've read on many of the quit smoking sites that chest pain, chest constriction and difficulty breathing is not unheard of when people first quit smoking and much more so if a person quits during a chest cold or infection.

Second, I have suspected for a few months that I might have hiatus hernia....well, I woke up coughing in the middle of the night with an awful acidy taste in my mouth and realised I had burped up? Or my esophagus had ejected acid and it was going down my wind pipe. Well like I said....things that make you go hmmmmmmmm. Maybe this was the cause of my initial lung issue. Who knows. Maybe it was just my lungs rebelling against smoking too. However, during my lung inflammation there never was much phlegm to cough up, just an awful lot of inflammation. Hopefully things just keep getting better because it's nice to be comfortable for a change.