Q:

I woke up at 6am with the sudden impulse to cough, the first thing I noticed past having to cough was a completely dry mouth and my face was sideways on the pillow. After a quick coughing fit, and a gag reflex, I got up and went to the bathroom. Coughing and gagging for a good 5-10 minutes. The whole time I had this small burn/itch in the back of my throat, pretty deep down, and I felt kind of nauseous, I almost threw up a couple times, but never actually did. When I tried drinking water it both was helpful and made the gag worse.

The only thing I can think of is that something crawled in my mouth, went down the pipe that it could (since I was breathing...) and died when I went into a coughing fit. Ideas?

 

A:

Unlikely that something crawled in your mouth without you awakening before you started coughing. It is more likely that you swallowed wrong in your sleep and gagged on your own saliva/mucus, causing throat spasms that took awhile to relax. If you have pollen allergies, this is the time of year when they start to get really bad and do cause itching and throat spasms.

If things aren't back to normal this morning, you can be seen in clinic to make sure all is okay.

~The Doc