Dementia Man: Mr. Q has a Choking Bout
By Twinty Karat
I heard a loud voice calling me, my wife, while I was in my room updating one of my websites. Apparently Mr. Q was choking. He has a big problem with his saliva. We have tried various things, but none have solved the problem.
His doctor says it is the medicine he is taking that causes it. I have my doubts as to the medicine being the cause. It may make it worse, but I don’t think it is the main cause of the problem.
We did reduce the dosage according to the doctor, but the problem still persists, although it does seem to be somewhat less than with the higher dosage. But it is still a major problem in many respects, now that he is choking because of saliva/mucus buildup. Not sure if this is a dementia – Alzheimer’s problem or from some other cause.
We got him from bed — he has been in bed a couple of hours or more. It was a real job trying to get him to spit all the mucus from his throat. Unbelievable how much came out over a 15 – 20 minute period.
It seemed like it would never end. The problem was compounded by him not knowing to gargle to clean his mouth and make it easy to come out. It is real sticky and does not come out easily.
Mr. Q seems to have forgotten how to gargle most of the time. He has also apparently forgotten how to blow his nose. His nose was also stuffed up, maybe with the same thing. We finally seemed to get most of it out by prodding him to spit it out.
We gave him a lot of water to rinse his mouth, probably a dozen or more times to help it come out easier. All the while he is doing this very slowly, sometimes stopping for no apparent reason.
It’s been a while now, but because he has such a problem as this spit/saliva/mucus problem we have to put him in bed on his side so he will not choke on his saliva or mucus. Yes Mr. Q does not know how to get in bed most of the time. When he remembers, he always ends up right at the edge of the bed so any little movement he will fall off. So we have to always put him to bed.
Although he has been with us less than five months he had deteriorated a whole lot and has seemed to have forgotten many basic things. We have tried to train him to go outside and spit on the dirt, but even that little task he almost never gets right and virtually always spits (sometimes a lot of spit and mucus-like gooey stuff) which gets on the cement and bricks of the patio.
This is a problem as it causes hordes of ants and sometimes he has to go out there in a hurry and he will have no shoes on. So it has to be kept clean so there are no other problems like him standing in the spit, etc. that he just spit out.
Maybe it doesn’t sound like a real problem, but when it happens an almost uncountable number of times a day it is something you would not want to continuously clean up.
So far we have not been able to get him to do other things to help solve the cleanup and unsanitary problems associated with this sort of problem. Mr. Q got back to bed (with my help and none of his own) and so far has not made a sound.
Hope that’s the end of this problem tonight. We probably have to see the doctor again real soon to see if there is anything else we can try to ease this problem of his.
If anyone has known anyone with this problem of spitting excessively and getting a huge buildup of saliva almost instantly (it seems) and eliminated or reduced it to a manageable level please a comment below or or contact me via the Contact Form.
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