She a couple weeks ago had puemonia and was in the hospital for a couple days, the Dr had her on antibiotics 2 scripts of them. She is still struggling with a cough. Anytime she swallows anything she wants to cough and choke up. Makes it hard to feed her. Plus I hate seeing her with this aggrevation. Poor little thing is loosing weight because of it and all. Curtis1
The trick, with dad at least, was that he eat very slowly and completely process bite number 1 before taking bite number 2. Still, he did get pneumonia twice. The second time he ended up on a respirator and brought about a steep decline he never recovered from.
We can only do what we can do.
I understand your sadness.
Besides higher levels of oxygen, a nebulizer helped clear some of the congestion, but the goal was addressing the underlying conditions.
Has she had a post-discharge x-ray to determine if she still has pneumonia, or if she has any other pulmonary issues? I think the swallow study is a good suggestion as well; it will clearly show what happens when she attempts to swallow, especially if aspiration is taking place.
Another thing you can try in conjunction with a swallow study is seeing a speech pathologist, who can help with swallowing issues. One Dad saw emphasized clearing the mouth before adding any more food; it's amazing how often even I do this - kind of like eating on the run developed during working days when lunch time was sometimes just quickly gobbling down something before getting back to the work at hand.
"Woofing" down food might have been tolerable when we were younger, but not with older folks who end up with a literal traffic jam of food in their mouths and throats, kind of like trying to get on the freeway during rush hour when all the cars are clogged up together.