Hello,

I am looking for input from anyone who has had candida in their esophagus. Heather is currently battling this and right now, it seems like she is not winning. She had a few white patches in her mouth, but they came and went, so it was not diagnosed early. I am going to call her surgeon today, but I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has had this.

I'm not even positive it is candida, but that is what she is being treated for with Diflucan. She has only had 3 doses and maybe it just takes longer before she will see results. But if she doesn't soon get over the nausea and vomiting, she will end up in the hospital. It has been 11 days now and she still throws up about half the time. She will have a good day and keep a little Ensure down, then the next day she is throwing up again. I'm hoping the surgeon will do a scope or something to determine if there is something else wrong.

This is a great example of why a multidisciplinary center is the best place to receive treatment. We didn't even know which doctor was best equipped to correctly diagnose this. You would think it would be easily recognized, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I guess if your mouth is covered in white fuzz, it is easy. But who knows what is going on in the esophagus or stomach?

Thanks,

Rosemary

Rosie,

Although, I did not have candila in my mouth but I did have a lot problems with ensure during my radiation treatment. I actually drink the medical food they nose fed me in hospital which is called " Fibersource HN", when I told my oncologist about what I did, he said that is the best I could get. If Heather had problem with Ensure, maybe you could try "Fibersource HN". It is spy milk based with no artificial flavor. I odered them from local pharmacy.

Thanks WZ. I was beginning to wonder if we should perhaps switch to something else besides Ensure. She did use it after her surgery and had no problem with it. But that doesn't mean it's not causing problems now. I will check into it.

Rosemary

Diflucan will take more than a week to have significant effect. While Candida is relatively harmless when you get a bloom of it in your mouth, once it progresses into your esophagus and even into your stomach it can become a very SERIOUS situation and hard to get rid of. Please stay on top of the doctors, and ensure that this is monitored very closely. Also be sure that she is not throwing up her meds... Diflucan has to be taken for many consecutive days and you must maintain a constant blood level of it to have therapeutic effect. My gut instinct is this is not related to what she is eating.

Brian,

Thanks for the info. We are careful to make sure she doesn't throw up after taking the Diflucan. She tries to take it at about the same time each day, but if she is queasy, we wait. After taking it, she doesn't move around for awhile because movement seems to set her stomach off. I also doubt it is food related, but we are willing to try anything at this point, so we are limiting the Ensure for now just in case. Saltines, moistened first, seem to be staying down okay.

Yesterday, she didn't throw up, but she also didn't eat hardly anything. She can not continue this way for long as she has lost more than 12 lbs. in the last 1 1/2 weeks. She is able to tolerate water in small amounts, so she is keeping hydrated.

We are going back to the doctors today and they are going to check her bowels for blockage. They say that could be contributing to the vomiting, although not the primary cause.

Thanks,
Rosemary

P.S. I'm beginning to wonder if I should stop posting so much. It seems like I never have good news about Heather's condition. I'm afraid some people just starting out may be scared more than necessary by reading about her many problems. Opinions from anyone, please?

Rosie,

Sorry to hear that Heather is still fighting with Candida.

It appears that Heather and I were almost parallel in our treatment, although we had different paths.

It has been more than 6 months since my diagnosis. I have gone through the lengthy surgery and the harsh radiation / chemo treatment, losing 48 lbs of my body weight. I had infections every month in Oct, Nov and Dec. My chemotherapy had to be halted for more than a week when I was hospitalized to drain the abscess. Because of the repeated infections, my Doctor is concerned that the infection may eventually get into my jaw bone causing osteomyelitis. I have done nuclear scan of jaw bone early this year and seen infectitious doctors for the infections and I am in the middle of Hyperbaric oxygen treatment right now. Three weeks ago, fearing of drug addiction, I stopped my OxyContin pain medicine and it left me with pretty strong withdraw symptom.

To make it short, I have not felt normal at all after 6 months of treatment. It seems to me the problems just came one after another and I start to wondering what will be the next. All I can do is to tell myself be patient and to deal with them one at time.


WZ

Hi Rosie,
I had thrush from the second week of radiation on for about 6 months. I took Diflucan and Nystatin and nothing helped. I ran a terrible fever for a while so had some antibiotic, however, I had no vomiting or nausea.

Finally a doctor in the dental dept put me on Dexamethasone Elixir USP 0.5mg for two weeks. This is some kind of a steroid, but it cleared it up in the two week period. This was 5+ years ago so medicines may have changed, but if she doesn't improve you might ask.

Subsequent to that bout, I had a prosthodontist tell me that when you have thrush you should not eat any sugars or anything that can turn into sugar, basically anything white - potatoes, rice, milk, bread, pasta, etc. - anything made with white flour that turns into sugar. Thrush feeds on sugars. So NOW THEY TELL ME.

Hope that helps and she is feeling better.

Rosie....please read the sites Candida page if you have not already, http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/dental/candida.htm and remember...Saltines have no nutritional value at all. You need to try other things that will give her body something to work with.

Thanks everybody. I appreciate all the info.

WZ, I'm curious to know what type of withdrawal symptoms you had, because Heather has also been trying to get off the oxycontin. We were just told today that besides the danger of addiction, it also causes your bowels to shut down and you can get severe constipation, which causes all kinds of problems. Would have been nice to know that ahead of time.

Brian, I re-read the candida section and I do know that saltines provide no nutrients. And we will avoid them now anyway since they are a white flour product. (Thanks, Eileen.) But, how is a person to get nutrients if they throw up almost every time they eat? It doesn't matter what she eats, or whether it is taken by tube or by mouth, most of it comes back up. We only tried the saltines because that is the old standby food for nausea. If anyone has any other ideas, we are open to all suggestions.

Rosemary

Hi, Rosie!

OxyContin could cause constipation but I was fine, I think it may because I was also on antibiotics all these days which happened to have opposite effect.

My withdraw symptom was the panic feeling in the evening. I could not sleep at all for 4 nights, I felt short breath and racing heartbeat(I think this was called panic ?) . To me, daytime was fine. Another symptom I felt was muscle main all over my body and joint pain in both hands. Legs were very weak, had to go upstair slowly. Since I was taking OxyContin only for about 3 months, I was able to stop it without too much trouble. My dosage went from 20 mg/day to 60 mg/day and then back to 40mg /day.