I have a runny nose. It is really annoying. I was taking a shower and started to blow my nose. All of a sudden… something came out of it. It was a ball of… something. Spongy/soft and quite large - almost a walnut. It was painful. And bloody. What the hell just happened? Did I just lose a piece of my respiratory system? It is not bleeding any more and now I can breathe properly again, but it was quite disturbing… No photos were taken.
Is it possibly some kind of food that you coughed while swallowing, and it lodged up in your sinus cavity? I’ve had that happen, but it sure wasn’t the size of a walnut…
It was probably a blob of mucus from your respiratory tract. Maybe sinuses, maybe bronchus. Check out this “cast” of the bronchial tubes made out of mucus. Bet it felt awesome when it was out.
And boo on no picture! 
That is pretty impressive. I didn’t realize the insides were so… um… tentacly.
It could also have been a blood clot - that’s about the right size, and they’re bloody and spongy.
Sometimes if you get a nosebleed you end up with a large, gross ball of snot and clotted blood stuck up there. When you pull it out it feels like you’re yanking out a large chunk of your brain. But in a good way.
I think that was it - Mucus + blood… I am still amazed that it came out of my body. I mean, it looked way too big to pass through my nostril.
As gross as it sounds something About it comming out gave me that warm fuzzy feeling. Even better than popping a big zit!
Was it dark red (like blood) all the way through?
Next: Coughing up a lung calculus. Pointy!
Medical advice is best suited to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
My family calls those “snot babies”.
Totally gross but oh so fun.
Obligatory Total Recall clip.
Thank goodness my stomach is empty since I have day surgery scheduled. Also, eww.
I used to get massive nosebleeds and thick strings of dark bloody mucus/clot would attach to the tissue I was using and come pulling out. I feel vaguely sick just writing about it.
I like the really long gluey ones. You know, you’re picking at what you think is just a little glob, then you can feel this looong string of booger being pulled down from the center of your head.
You people have way more satisfying excretory lives than I do.
I wash out my sinuses daily with a product called Alkalol and had one one of those Total Recall moments once when something rinsed free from a deep dark place in my face… It was horrifyingly large and very freaky. I recognised it as a hardened dense piece of mucus, but Christ, it still haunts me.
Oooh! As soon as I saw the thread title I remembered the most amazing (to me) thing I’ve ever seen come out of a person’s face. My husband has had bad allergies and sinus problems his whole life, and once blew out a chunk of what we ultimately determined was thickened mucus. It was over an inch long, and about a half inch in diameter - WAY WAY bigger than I thought an adult human’s sinus would accommodate and still allow breathing. It was very much like a piece of dried rubber cement.
After seeing the image in WhyNot’s link with all the little branches, I’m disappointed and a little worried that all the little tributaries didn’t come out of my husband’s shnoz. I wonder what happened to them!
My eight-year old had one of those (slightly smaller) and I acted all worried and told him it was part of his brain. Good times.