Completed treatment on 6/14/12. Am improving every day, but have no saliva. Want to eat, can even swallow liquids without much difficulty, but can't swallow food. When will I be able to?
Thanks very much, Tom

Hi Tom, welcome to OCF. The dry mouth will stick around for a few months. Some members carry a water bottle with them for years. Others have found success with taking saliva stimulating meds. I tried them but didnt like the side effects (sweating). Docs say one month of recovery for every week of rads. Everyone is different and will recover at their own pace. Hang in there, things will slowly improve.

best wishes with your continued recovery.

My husband had pretty bad mucositis - took him three months to start in on solid food (if you can call an easy over egg solid). We got pretty creative with protein shakes before that.

His saliva is returning - dinner takes about one glass of water instead of 3 or 4. It is frustratingly slow, but better than the alternative.

Best wishes on your recovery!

First off remember that we all can recover differently so what anyone says may not apply to you. We are similar in Dx and Tx except I had Cisplatin and I didn't have a PEG. For me it was appx 3 weeks PT (post Tx) before I really wanted to eat solid food and it was 4 months PT before I could taste much of anything. At 5 months I had another positive bump in my taste but it wasn't until 14 months PT that I really felt a big improvement in my taste and saliva. It took me a full 2 years to get to the point where I didn't see any further improvements. I always drank Carnation Instant Breakfast VHC with every meal to boost my caloric intake and I tried to consume 3000 cals each and every day in addition to water. At first the eating was so slow that my food would get cold before I finished and my portions were small.

Time improves everything but you must be patient.

christine
Thanks for the info
tom

My Dad had the same thing happen with his oral cancer. He had Stage 4 Retromolar cancer, surgicallly- a radical neck dissection and a pectoral flap to rebuild his jaw. He has been G tube dependent since 2002. He produces no saliva- a side effect of radiation, and it never did return. He got used to it. He uses oral swabs, and wet washcloths to keep the oral cavity moist.

Best of luck to you

Hi Tom,

I am six months out of treatment, and I have recently (within the last few weeks) finally seen a small improvement in my saliva . I have noticed recently I rarely have been getting the dry mouth attacks, and I am finally sleeping through the night - previously I was waking up 5-10 times every night with my mouth so dry I couldn't swallow. One thing I found extremely helpful in the meantime was the Biotene dry mouth gum. I carry a pack with me at all times and it has really saved me a few times at work when I was talking to a client and didn't have any water handy. Good luck!

Hi Tom,
I was lucky enough that I didn't need radiation, but since I have a pretty intensive tongue surgery I went a long time without eating. I was so fricken hungry!! So I started taking foods that were really moist like , chilli, potatoe soup nice thick gravy soups and threw them in the blender mmmmm it was delicous. Then I started eating similar foods and not blending them, like ravioli, I would smother it with sauce or gravy, and it would slide right down. Then my dad (bless him) started taking me to buffett resturants everyday, I would then try everything and little by little I was able to figure how to eat. Somethings I needed a lot of water to wash it down. Some things I just couldn't manage to move aroung my mouth or down my throat with my messed up tongue so I would use water or my finger. But it really helped to have all the variety to play with. 2.5 years later I eat just about everything I want. Some things are a little more difficult than others, but if I really want to eat somehting, I manage.

Also, there is a lot of good information on this site about food. I am sure Christine knows where to find it. It helped me a bunch.

Tom,
I am years out from my radiation and still have very little saliva. It takes some adjustment over a while but you will learn tricks like carrying water at all times, adding foods back slowly, drinking with solid foods, etc. I'm not saying yours won't return but it's not something you can count on.

Hello Tom. I'm about 8 weeks out of radiation and this week I have finally noticed some overall improvement. I went from having way too much ropey thick salvia to having very little sticky salvia. Now with all the extra out I'm able to take really few bites of food. I have to let the food sit in my mouth and get soggy and then I can chew. It's kind of like I have to let my mouth know what's coming, what's in there and give my mouth time to get adjusted each bite.
You'll get there and a lot of people I've spoken with got at least some of their salvia back. I've also read a few clinical studies where a majority of the people studied got quite a bit of their salvia back.