Old Zhang has been in good health since he retired, but since the last week he has always felt bad about drinking water, often accompanied by choking and coughing, and his speech is always hoarse when he wakes up every day and gradually gets better in the afternoon. When he went to the hospital, the doctor did a laryngoscopy and x-ray and told him that he had unilateral vocal cord paralysis. In layman’s terms, it means that one of the two gates between the esophagus and trachea is broken, so what he eats and drinks in sometimes runs into the trachea. The doctor advised him to get timely treatment to avoid future problems. Old Zhang felt that he was still in good health and ignored the doctor’s advice. The symptoms of choking and hoarseness persisted, and although it sometimes bothered him, he didn’t think it would cost him a fortune in medical bills to get treatment. However, after some time, the old man had a serious cold and often coughed up large pieces of pus phlegm, accompanied by fever. Old Zhang felt that the problem was serious and went to the hospital. Unexpectedly, this time the doctor looked at the situation and sent him to hospital directly after taking X-rays. The worst thing was that he could not eat anything after hospitalization, and could only get nutritional fluid into his stomach through a tube from his nose. After a few days of injections, the symptoms still couldn’t get better. The doctor again probed the lungs through a soft tracheoscope that reached through Lao Zhang’s nose and sucked out a lot of stuff. Finally, not only did Lao Zhang’s fever not go down, but breathing difficulties also occurred, and doctors had to send him to the intensive care unit to breathe through ventilator assistance. Through the efforts of about a week, Lao Zhang finally got rid of the danger and gradually got better after a period of recovery. Looking back, Lao Zhang felt as if he had come back from a trip to the ghost gate. A check of the hospitalization costs, simply to astronomical figures, but in the good health insurance reimbursement part, they can barely hold on. Thinking about the earliest doctor’s caution, it really should be treated early for choking and coughing as a symptom. Why did this problem happen to Zhang? The primary cause is the repeated entry of food and soup into the airway and eventually into the lungs due to paralysis of the vocal cords on one side. The lungs are a very clean part of the body, and when food residue enters, it accumulates and causes infection, eventually leading to chronic pneumonia. Second, the upper respiratory tract infection led to the aggravation of the lung infection and the formation of an abscess in the lung, which seriously affected breathing and thus further weakened the resistance of the organism. Third, the old man was old and his lungs were not capable of self-cleaning by coughing. The above three reasons formed a vicious circle, making the old Zhang’s condition worse and worse. The most effective solution to this choking cough and hoarseness is to see a laryngeal specialist, who reduces the size of the laryngeal opening by pushing the paralyzed vocal cords through a minor surgery as needed. After the surgery, the patient’s coughing problem is solved, and the hoarseness is gone. It is important to note that some patients may not have choking and coughing after vocal cord paralysis, but have significant hoarseness and a small voice, which can also be resolved with this procedure.