Coughing/hawking up blood due to hay fever? Or something more serious?

[flourella]

Has anyone here with hay fever ever coughed or hawked up bloody mucus from the throat or lungs? I have, several times this week and I don't know whether to be worried or not. I have read that allergies can cause capillaries in the nose and throat to burst and blood then pools in the throat, but can that really happen without a person realising? And why wouldn't it have happened to me before when I've had hay fever for around 10 years?

It's only been after I've come back from a long walk (I walk miles a week, all year round) and have needed to bring up very sticky mucus from deep in my throat (could be lungs). The first time the sputum was uniformly pink, and when you google that you get told it could be pulmonary oedema and potentially heart failure. The other times it has been clear/white and heavily streaked with dark red blood, and google says that could be a blood clot or cancer. I do have longer-standing breathing issues that I've never described to a doctor because I have put them down to anxiety, but what if it's all related and something serious is going on?

Has anyone with hay fever had this? Should I bother a GP or would I just look pathetic? I do have health anxiety but I don't go to the doctors very often. When I do, scans etc always show that something is going on even if it's not the worst thing, so my instincts aren't completely warped by anxiety.

Good grief op
that is not normal

What?! The anxiety? Or having some blood in mucus from the throat?!!

It's only a bit of mucus, I'm not coughing up litres of it. Isn't even that normal?

No you won't look pathetic seeing your GP for this.

I have no medical qualifications but I suffer from terrible hay fever and have never had this or ever heard of anyone having anything like that. Please do go and get it checked and mention the breathing problems too.

Could be a chest infection, could be Covid, could be any number of things not necessarily anything serious. But it is NOT a normal hay fever symptom, so the first thing to do is get it checked out tomorrow.

Why would you think that coughing up mucus streaked with dark red blood is something to ignore or put down to hay fever? Get to a doctor and put your mind at rest.

No, that is definitely not a normal hay fever symptom, it sounds far more like some sort of chest infection and you need to see a doctor asap.

Could be a few things, aggressive coughing bursts small blood vessels (my partner gets this) or swallowed blood from nosebleeds which I get occasionally. Please see your GP just to rule out anything more serious.

There are lots of reasons you could be coughing up blood. But they all require medical assistance. Ring 111 and tell them what you said here.

Thanks for the replies. I will (try to) make a GP appointment tomorrow.

I'm a bit more concerned now that several of you have said you've never heard of such a thing caused by allergies. That last reply makes me feel a bit better, though. What I've read is that coughing and breathing in dry air can rupture blood vessels in the throat and nose respectively. I have had several bouts of (dry, tickly) coughing recently, though my main hay fever symptoms are sneezing and unbelievable amounts of post-nasal drip. My nostrils feel really dry as well but worse after being out walking, which is when this is happening.

Hopefully it is just that but I guess there's only one way to find out.

I regularly have tiny streaks of blood in my mucus during hayfever season. But this sounds far more severe and generally not an ok sign. Get it checked out please!

Do you get nose bleeds at all?

DH had this the other week and turned out it was from that rather than his lungs.

Sounds more like a chest infection but in any case it definitely needs checking out

I have had this from time to time, especially when I've been using nasal spray for the hayfever.

Jwhb and grimmers44 thank you for telling me that you've had something similar! I would say the streaks of blood in mine have been more than "tiny", but not huge amounts considering there hasn't been loads of the mucus itself. At most the size of a large coin. I bought a nasal spray a couple of weeks ago but did only use it for a few days.

I haven't had a free-flowing nosebleed for decades, but the skin inside my nose does split and scab over quite frequently. Don't know why.

Was the blood the size of a large coin, or did you have mucus the size of a large coin and the blood within it was smaller?

FourTeaFallOut the latter.

Maybe it's sometimes been a bit bigger, like the size of the ring you'd make by putting thumb and index finger tips together. But that's the mucus, with blood within it.

Good. Was the mucus around it discoloured?

FourTeaFallOut no. Clear and whitish.

Would that make it less likely to be a chest infection? Or anything very serious, do you think?

I have bronchiectasis and regular chest infections, I'm not an expert but I know when I have coughed up blood (50p piece size) they would have been more concerned if it hadn't been among/ alongside mucus. You can have a chest infection without too much discoloration but if it were yellow or green it would be more likely that was the problem .

FourTeaFallOut thank you. I will see what the GP says tomorrow. I'm not going to mention cancer and I might not even mention hay fever. Just describe what's happened and answer the questions she comes back with.

To reassure you, I’ve had this happen just once in my life (and believe me I’ve coughed a lot). I lived in an area of East London where there were occasional cases of tuberculosis, so I was sent to hospital for checks. All was fine and they put to down to coughing.

So: yes, absolutely get it checked out. But it’s very much possible for it to happen as a once-off and for it to be harmless 💐

How did it go, op? Was the gp able to help?

@FourTeaFallOut thanks for asking!

I described the bloody mucus and the other respiratory symptoms I've been having. I said that the ones I'd had for ages I'd put down to anxiety and she agreed that sounded likely. She then asked me if I'd had a cough, cold, or hay fever recently so I told her I think I've had hay fever for a few years now, but never with much coughing.

She took my pulse and blood oxygen levels and listened to heart and lungs with stethoscope. Said everything sounded normal and it is probably localised bleeding due to coughing/clearing throat/etc, but would send me for a chest x-ray anyway, so I'm going tomorrow morning. It's a drop-in clinic which surprised me.

No blood since I posted and I was out walking yesterday. So it might already be gone. Hopefully the x-ray shows nothing suspicious.

Hi OP I had a really awful chesty cough that lasted for a couple of weeks over Christmas and I coughed up blood streaked mucus …am sure it was the trauma of coughing so much. Had a course of ABS and have been ok since .
This also happened a couple of years ago as well.So hopefully nothing to worry about.