My grandmother (89) and she’s never sought treatment. It’s just normal for her to have coughing fits. Shes always blaming it on choking on her food or allergies. Every time we go out to eat she ends up coughing through the whole dinner and its kind of embarrassing. I know that sounds insensitive but people stare.

Lately her coughing has become much worse and this past week she says she’s been sick. She said she thinks she caught RSV so she went to urgent care and they diagnosed her with pneumonia and gave her antibiotics. Shes been on the antibiotics for 4 days and no improvement. Thing is, I highly doubt she told urgent care that she has COPD. My honest opinion is I don’t think she’s sick at all I think she’s having a COPD flare up.

She lives alone and is still agile and independent so we can’t force her to do anything but with some knowledge I can maybe talk her into it with my family backing me.

I’m not sure what I’m really asking here. Without treatment and frequent coughing fits is this an emergency that my family and I need to start trying to force her or is it ok if she fine just coughing all the time? Any advice is appreciated.