The dry throat can simply be dehydration. If a person is not very mobile, he/she will not make many trips to the kitchen to pour out a drink, even water from the tap.
If your mother -in-law is constantly coughing and clearing her throat, this could mean not an infection or incipient cold, but that her automatic reflex for swallowing saliva is now impaired. My Alzheimer's friend can go into paroxyms of coughing for this reason, but all is resolved if she is sat up straight or leaning slightly forward, with her mouth shut, and the automatic reflex seems to kick in. So this can be a problem of bad posture in a chair.
Try getting her to keep bottles of water within easy reach to see if that does the trick, before suspecting Alzheimer's.
I can't claim any experience in this situation except the dry throats I get when the humidity in the house is too low and the furnace is on, i.e., specifically in dryer weather and especially so in frigid weather.
Try getting a humidifier to counteract the dryness. Get a hygrometer which measures temperature and moisture level in rooms. That's a good clue to whether or not the air is too dry.
And if your furnace has a humidifier, make sure it's serviced and operates properly.
Sometimes I heat up cider to help keep my throat hydrated. I love cider in the winter anyway.
Sometimes a dry throat and a cough could be related to acid reflux.
One can tell if a house is too dry is when you put a knit top on over you head and your hair is sticking out all over the place due to static electricity. Or if you have a cat when petting it you get sparks. Oops. Time to add some water to the air.
I don't know about ALZ, but the voice getting softer and softer is a common symptom in Lewy Body Dementia and Parkinson's with Dementia. Speech therapy can actually help that.
How do you know that her throat is dry? Does she complain of it? Does it feel better when she drinks something? Could she be dehydrated in general?
If your mother -in-law is constantly coughing and clearing her throat, this could mean not an infection or incipient cold, but that her automatic reflex for swallowing saliva is now impaired. My Alzheimer's friend can go into paroxyms of coughing for this reason, but all is resolved if she is sat up straight or leaning slightly forward, with her mouth shut, and the automatic reflex seems to kick in. So this can be a problem of bad posture in a chair.
Try getting her to keep bottles of water within easy reach to see if that does the trick, before suspecting Alzheimer's.
Try getting a humidifier to counteract the dryness. Get a hygrometer which measures temperature and moisture level in rooms. That's a good clue to whether or not the air is too dry.
And if your furnace has a humidifier, make sure it's serviced and operates properly.
Sometimes I heat up cider to help keep my throat hydrated. I love cider in the winter anyway.
One can tell if a house is too dry is when you put a knit top on over you head and your hair is sticking out all over the place due to static electricity. Or if you have a cat when petting it you get sparks. Oops. Time to add some water to the air.
How do you know that her throat is dry? Does she complain of it? Does it feel better when she drinks something? Could she be dehydrated in general?