My mother, who is 71, was put on hydrocodone about a month ago because she was having trouble with a chronic cough (not caused by smoking, she just always has a cough - no one knows why). She has since had a series of attacks where she couldn’t breath. She has never had asthma, so it was very unusual. She went to the ER a couple of times and was quite scared. She has been given full-time oxygen and has been put through a battery of tests to figure out why her breathing is screwed up.
My dad just refilled her hydrocodone and noticed that the warnings indicate that an allergic reaction may cause, among other things, difficulty breathing. Could she have been having an allergic reaction for an entire month that would cause this breathing problem? I’ve done some online research, but I can’t find anything that describes this side effect beyond simply saying “difficulty breathing”. Is this a common side effect? Has anyone else heard of such a severe reaction? If anyone can shed some light, I’d be much appreciated.
(By the way, she has contacted her doctor and is waiting to hear back. I just thought someone here could share what they know. I hate not knowing!)
Hydrocodone is an opiate, so it does depress the respiratory drive. This usually doesn’t manifest as acute subjective breathlessness, but more as sleepiness, decreased consciousness, and the tendency to inhale less deeply and less often when in that state.
If a true allergic reaction would occur, one could get shortness of breath a la an asthma-type attack. But those tend to be fairly dramatic, along the lines of swell up, collapse and die. It’s not impossible for opiates to cause such a side-effect as you describe, but I’d think it unlikely.
ACE inhibitors (enalapril, lisinopril, other “pril” drugs) are notorious for causing chronic coughs.
Thanks for your feedback. The dr. finally called my mom back and basically dismissed her concerns. He told her that if people paid attention to all the warnings that medications come with, no one would ever take medicine again. Then he tried to foist her off on another dr. that barely knows her. It’s very frustrating. No one seems to be able to figure out why her breathing has gone all screwy and this guy’s attitude isn’t helping.
But I digress, I really do appreciate your input. She’s going to have her dr. recheck all her meds to make sure none of them could be causing it. She’s on a lot of stuff, maybe even a ‘pril’ or two.
Oh Jesus . . . certainly medicine labels tend toward the dramatic, but your doctor is not providing remotely adequate care. If you’re worried about your mother’s health, and he’s being dismissive of your concerns, you should raise a fuss. Tell him you feel she’s not being treated adequately, and consider switching doctors.
Has she had a chest x-ray or other procedure to actually get a look at her chest? I don’t want to alarm you, but that cough can be a symptom of cancer. That might also explain the shortness of breath.
Excalibre, I agree. His condescension knows no bounds. I told her to find another doctor and talked to my dad about it, too. She started seeing a specialist who sounds like he cares whether she actually survives, so I urged her to ask him for recommendations on a new primary care physician immediately.
Kalhoun, she has had chest x-rays. And MRIs and CATscans and Electro-thingies, too. They’ve pulled out all the heavy machinery for this one. She thought cancer first off because she had a mastectomy a number of years ago. So far, no one has found anything, but with the level of care she’s been getting, I’d like to get a second, third and fourth opinion. My parents live in NH and I wish they lived closer to Boston so she could visit a better hospital.
She’s had a chronic cough for the last - well - since I’ve known her, and that’s 34 years. That was how I would find her if I wandered off in a store. She ended up breaking a rib last month during a coughing fit, then they put her on hydrocodone at the ER to suppress the coughing and her dr. just refilled the script. Such a heavy narcotic seems extreme to control coughing. But my parents can trace all this breathing stuff back to the day after she started taking this med. She’s going to ask (I told her to demand) to be taken off it to see if it helps her breathing.
IANAD, but I’m asthmatic. I probably was my whole life, but wasn’t diagnosed until my early 20s, even though I had a strong family history on both sides and all other indications were there.
If your mom has always had a cough, is it possible that she’s just an undiagnosed asthmatic, or that she has some other long-standing undiagnosed pulmonary issue? It might explain a few things, and there are lots of other undiagnosed asthmatics out there.
That, plus it’s good to know anyway. I know when I had surgery, the anaesthesiologist made very different decisions once he knew I was asthmatic. Also, there is a correlation between asthma and allergies in many cases. I second the notion that your mom should consider finding a new primary doc if this one is dismissing her concerns about, oh, things like being able to breathe.
Is it? All cough suppressants have strange side-effects; I believe that the recepter affected by cough medicines is one with important functions in the brain and there really is no way to suppress coughing without mental side-effects (ever heard of Robo-tripping?) A doctor could probably elaborate on this - but hydrocodone IS used as a cough suppressant on occasion. I used some leftover vicodin to treat myself when I had a really nasty cough one time, and it helped a lot even if it made me really itchy.
All the same, if she’s having shortness of breath as a side-effect from a medication, that’s severe. I’m glad she’s seeing someone more competent now.
Well, it definitely worked and she’s coughing less, but in order to keep it that way, she’d have to take it - forever, I guess. And it makes her logey and loopy, so that’s why it seemed extreme. If it were temporary, I wouldn’t be as concerned, but to have no plans of getting off a very addictive med seemed kind of over the top. But I don’t know if there’s anything else that would do the trick. Initially, they had her on an additional cough syrup and the combination of the two was making her hallucinate all sorts of crazy crap. She quit the syrup after her therapy ball grew wiggly spider legs and squirmed away. ~bleh~
