Been sick the past 5 days. Sometimes I feel like I'm getting better, usually right when I wake up from a nap, but a few hours later I feel just as bad again. I woke up in the middle of the night last night feeling like I was being strangled. I coughed and I coughed for, like, 10 minutes after that. Each cough feels like something vital and important is getting ripped out of my lungs, like I'm trying to cough something up that's supposed to be permanant. Actually, the things that I'm coughing up look alot like the things I've coughed up when i've quit smoking in the past. Last september, when I quit smoking the last time and went onto the nicotine gum full-time, I was surprised at how little I tar and such I coughed up. I think that what happened is that the nicotine gum, while not adding any more tar to the mix, is still paralyzing the cillia in my throat that make expulsion of tar possible. So there's still alot of tar left in there. Probably what I need to do is stop chewing the gum for awhile, at least for a month. But I can't start now, because of finals. And I can't start over break, because I have to work, and I don't want to be irritable then. And then the next quarter starts, and I'll need the gum to get through that as well. Probably there won't ever be a good time to quit it, and I'll just be stuck with tar in my lungs for the rest of my life, or at least until I get lung cancer.