I had an unpleasant experience this past Friday. Before I begin let me say that I am always thirsty at night: my mouth gets parched. And ever since I was a small child I have had to make many trips to the restroom at night. I have had a full work up on my bladder and kidneys due to a continual presence of red blood cells in my urine. Everything was fine and I am just one of those who will always throw out RBC's in my urine. That having been said, I received a fill (lost count as to how many I've had) over a week and a half ago. I am now at a whopping 4.75cc in a 4cc. I was concerned that it might be too tight but actually I can still eat solids but in small amounts. But I tend to have trouble sleeping sometimes and one area that is a problem is swallowing pills. If it's during the day, I just cut 'em up and have done with it. Well on Thursday night I woke up at 3am and knew it would be hard to get back to sleep. So I took a benadryl and lay back down to go to sleep. I woke up a short time later (30 min?) and I had inhaled Water into my lungs. I coughed and coughed for over an hour with water being produced. Eventually it stopped and I went to sleep. When I woke up I felt so terrible! Achey all over and dizzy. I could hardly sit still because of the pain (chest, back, neck, torso). I went to the ER and came to find out that my BP was 74/40. I was freezing all of a sudden and gratefully they triaged me in quickly. I required an IV for dehydration and toridol for the pain. The chest xrays show Fluid in my left lung. Diagnosis:aspiration pneumonia. Doc said this is worse than regular pneumonia because it's 'gram negative' and could kill you if not treated.

So now I am barely taking a sip if my mouth is REALLY dry at night and I'm on antibiotics. I went out and bought liquid tylenol and liquid benadryl. But I am still feeling weak and feverish. Doctor said I should get an unfill. But I think that it's more about lying down and drinking fluids. Seems I would have figgered that out but it took this experience to really get my attention. Oh just for frosting on the cake, the next morning the scale had me up 4 POUNDS. Dang saline solution anyway lol.

Edited September 23, 200817 yr by cQQlgirl

I have had some similar(although not as horrible) experiences at night when I eat or drink less than two hours before I go to sleep since I had my last fill and have good restriction.

Your story is really a wake up call to me and I thank you for telling me about it. This could easily happen to me. I bought a pill grinder at CVS- the most helpful item I own now! I can't stomach the liquid meds-I usually PB with them.

Glad you are feeling better. If you can eat, I would not give up the restriction, just watch your intake as it gets close to the time you lay down.