I have to laugh a little about the brand of water?!?! I used to work for a company that manufactured water quality testing equipment and most bottled waters are so heavily filtered that there is nothing left in them but practically pure H20. Coors beer advertises that it's made with "mountain spring water" but after they are done "polishing" it there are NO minerals left (the scale would clog their plumbing systems) - it might as well be distilled. Some of the cheaper bottled waters like Safeway brand taste like they came right out of the tap. You can almost smell the chlorine.

I personally couldn't stand the taste of Nystatin, although in the end I had no choice since I exceeded my "lifetime dose" of Diflucan ;-) Diflucan is also much more efficient.

I didn't use a suction machine. Others here have used "Puffs" brand tissue and I am sure that they will share with you the technique.

My mucositus issues were worse in at night and in the morning. If I could somehow get my throat a little cleared early on that would help immensely with swallowing.

I recently read somewhere about a new medication that was recently cleared by the FDA for mucositus. http://www.drugtopics.com/drugtopics/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=107987

or

http://www.drkoop.com/newsdetail/93/522919.html

They gave me a decongestant which helped a little. Stay away from antihistamines they will dry you out too much. I can't remember the name of the stuff - it began with a g Guana????something.

Propping yourself up at night while sleeping probably helped more than anything else.