Choked on water!? Aspiration pneumonia/dry drowning!!!??

[EdwardSeesStars]

Hello everyone, I'm freaking out because I drank some water but it somehow went down the wrong pipe as I swallowed! So I couldn't breathe for a couple of seconds then i started breathing again but I didn't cough back up the water!! 😰 I was in panic mode afterwards and now I'm terrified of dry drowing or aspiration pneumonia!!! Did it stay in my lungs!? I'm scared I might not be able to tell the difference between anxiety symptoms or if I'm really sick from choking on the water! Anybody else experience this? Much appreciated if I got some feedback. Thanks!

[Fishmanpa]

Just no....

Positive thoughts

[MyNameIsTerry]

This is something millions of people do all the time so if it were a problem, it would be a serious public health concern.

Choking on water to a dangerous level is like drowning. You really would know if you were going through this and you would be struggling to breathe.

Pneumonia is extremely unlikely, you body knows how to rid itself of water.

[Amani]

I thought I'd bump this up as it's recent and I'm now going through a similar thing as the OP. Though ironically I didn't know that dry drowning/secondary drowning was a thing until I read this post.

Last night I had a sip of water (it may have been more than a sip, I can't remember exactly) and it went down the wrong way. I choked on it quite a bit and I remember it left me with a wheeze (which went after a bit of coughing). After this happened I was really worried about secondary drowning (when you breathe water into your lungs and it blocks the pours that receive oxygen) as I felt like the 'choking' was going on longer than usual. But the symptoms slowly went away and after about 20 minutes they had completely gone so I forgot the whole thing and figured I was fine.

Well this evening I started feeling symptoms such as feeling like chronic throat clearing, shortness of breath etc. These are normal symptoms of anxiety for me which I deal with most days. I also very often experience quite severe feelings of breathlessness/suffocation because I have a Dysfunctional Breathing Disorder (due to chronic anxious breathing over the years). But I got it in my head again that the symptoms were actually because of secondary drowning. And I did some research and it can apparently show up up to 24 hours after inhaling the water. I have done absolutely nothing all evening except for sitting here worrying and waiting for my symptoms to pass/see if it gets worse. The symptoms have stayed but I have a hunch my anxiety over them is keeping them going. I actually broke down crying about an hour ago about how stupid it is that I've gotten so worked up over the genuine belief that I'm drowning from a sip of water I choked on a day ago and how it's messed up my plans, but I still can't convince myself it's not happening. And because I'm accustomed to the feeling of breathlessness it's hard for me to tell if I am in fact genuine struggling with oxygen.

I have no clue how I'll sleep tonight. I normally take a Valium if my anxiety gets this debilitating but I drank last night and have heard scary things about mixing alcohol and Valium

---------- Post added at 03:34 ---------- Previous post was at 03:34 ----------

(Writing this post actually made me feel a bit better)