worried

You don't mention if your consultant referred you to a respiratory physiotherapist to teach you how to do lung clearance and show you various gadgets i.e. flutter: acapella.  Once you have learned the techniques you will be expected to do them yourself once or twice a day.

You could also ask about nebulising saline (isotonic or hypertonic).  It is good he has put you on prophylactic antibiotics.

Good luck

cx

Ask your doctor to ask the radiologist reading your scans to consider whether you have a low grade non Hodgkins ("Malt") lymphoma. It:

* is a non-aggressive form of cancer; it does not necessarily even need treatment in many patients

* causes increased sputum, so maybe worth treating if you have it and it is contributing to your sputum/cough/exacerbations (infection onsets)

* shows like, and can be confused with lung cancer proper

* is easily treated if confined to a single site (as seems likely given you have apparently had the one shadow on your lung for a long time without it presumably showing elsewhere) with low dose/low impact radiotherapy

* is easily missed by average pulmonologist/radiotherapists (it's not that common but not rare) even having taken a biopsy - mine was until I got to a quality lung defence team

* needs a complete multi-site biopsy sample to be examined by an aware and on-form microbiologist (some biopsies are 'quick and dirty' to minimise the risk of a leaking lung - painful, but recovered from fully in a matter of tens of minutes)

Other thoughts, if you can get yourself clear of the infections for a few weeks then ask your pulmonologist whether it is worth trying a course of steroids (prednisolone). Your sputum production may be the result of excessive bronchi inflamation that could be reduced by steroids.

I'm not a medic - just someone who has been down many lanes in the path to a bronchiectasis diagnosis(!) and who reads around the subject, like many of us on this forum.