When eating breakfast this morning--it was a rather dry breakfast--my mother had a coughing fit where she coughed up most of the food with mucus. Later she had half a banana with oj and had no problem. For lunch she was eating a Healthy Choice meal with spaghetti and some chicken and garlic. She had another fit, much shorter this time, where again she coughed up what she had eaten. Both times she had the coughing fits she said her upper chest was tight which was relieved after she coughed up the stuff.

My mother just turned 99, takes 50 mg metoprolol in the morning, 25 mg at night. She also takes 20mg of generic lasix and 10meq liquid potassium. She is supposed to start back on coumadin 3mg tomorrow. She was hospitalized in early january with coumadin toxicity and rectal bleeding, which turned out to be internal hemmorrhoids. She has had 2 banding procedures and tolerated that well.

She is taking a baby aspirin until she starts back up on the coumadin, and I will give her that in about an hour. I took her blood pressure this morning right after the coughing fit and her pressure was up to 170 over 102. I took it again when she was coughing recently, and it was about the same. I figured I would take it again after she has sat quietly for an hour.

When she came out of the hospital she was using only 1 of her pills, the metoprolol. Her nifedipine was added back in but was bringing her pressure too low. She was switched to generic Norvasc but that made her ankles swell and she was not able to lay down without feeling overwhelmed. She did have some fluid in the lungs. That drug was stopped and she was put back on her diuretic but at a lower dose. She improved with that. However, she says she feels blah and sleeps often during the day and then can't sleep at night. She will feel anxious in the morning but usually that improves in the afternoon. Because her ankles are not elevated her ankles swell. I asked her how she's feeling now and she said pretty good. Sorry to ramble like this but she never had 2 fits in one day. In the past she has had a fit if the bread was too thick or dry, but she never reacted to the chicken margherita before.

The family too tends to run to dry sinuses and post nasal drip, which I'll use an over the counter saline solution for to open up the nasal passages.

Any thoughts?