Drooling and coughing

ImMaggieMae

I posted this on the other board, but maybe people here have experience too.

 My DH who is around late stage 6 has started drooling in the past several days. It isn’t all the time, but worse in the evening and before bedtime. The past couple nights he has also been coughing at night, a loud cough. I think it may be related to the drooling. He sleeps on his back, on one of those wedge things for acid reflux and also a pillow. Last night I checked his oxygen level with one of those little oxyimeters. It was between 92 and 94 . Normal is 95-100. I tried getting him up but he was so sleepy (Risperidone) that the best I could do is to sit him up for several minutes. I saw in the morning that he had spit up a lot of phlegm on the edge of the bed. After a couple hours his oxygen level was back to 98-99. His temp was normal and a home Covid test was negative, as one earlier in the week.

Has anyone else experienced this with their LO? Taking him to an ER around here is a last resort for me because he always seems to come back worse than he was for memory issues. Also, a 3 hour wait in a waiting room with an incontinent person is a nightmare. His primary doc wasn’t returning calls yesterday when I was calling to see about something else. And her advise is almost always to go to ER. 

Has anyone else had this issue? I am beside myself with worry.

May flowers

I don’t know about the drooling. When my FIL was coughing a lot at night, we started him on some acid reducers like Pepcid AC(I think some of the meds cause reflux for him) and it helped. Maybe your DH just had some gunk he needed to cough up? Does he have allergies? Is he coughing when he drinks too?

Nerdyblond

No clue, ImMaggieMae.

I drool when I am concentrating?

​fesk

It could be any number of things, but is the Risperdone a new prescription or has the dose the been adjusted recently? Excess saliva is a side effect of Risperdone (and many antipsychotics). If the primary doctor is handling this medication, I recommend getting a specialist/geriatric psychiatrist involved instead.