I have been done with my 35 radiation and 7 chemo treatments for 6 weeks. I have tongue cancer at the base of my tongue.Even after finishing my azithromycin for strep, i still have the sore throat. I was ready to remove my Feeding tube after being done 6 weeks. I was eating 3 meals a day and keeping my weight up. Now I am not so sure. Its too sore to eat again. I feeling like I am going backwards. I go back to ent to see what has changed. if that goes well I will get a pet scan to see if we got the cancer. Has anyone had the strep thing happen to them?

Yes, strep is fairly common. I think this is due to your immune system being compromised from cancer and the treatments. For me, it took several years for my blood counts to stabilize. I picked up every bug around.

Im very sorry to hear you are having some set backs. Unfortunately this is pretty common for most patients during their recovery phase. The best thing you can do is to keep up with taking in at least 2500 calories and 48-64 oz of water daily. This needs to continue until at least the first year anniversary of finishing rads.

Getting the feeding tube out is a big milestone. Im sure you are impatient to get rid of it. At only 6 weeks post rads you still have a quite a bit of healing to do. Keeping the tube around for another couple weeks or maybe even months shouldnt be too hard to manage. Its better to hang onto it for a little while longer than to have a setback and need it after it has been removed.

Hope you feel better soon.

Hi Vernon - I had strep like throat infection before, during and after radiation; only mine was not strep. They cultured it, but nothing grew, so they said it was viral in nature and that no meds exist to treat it. Long story short, I just had to ride it out, it took several weeks, and it was medium painful, but it did cure itself.

So, are you sure your's is actually strep. If they didn't culture it to confirm diagnosis that azithromycin was not a cure. I say this because initially they didn't culture mine; they just relied on the fact that the inside of my mouth and throat LOOKED like it would if I had strep (green crud everywhere).

Now, as for the "feeling like I'm going backwards" side of this. I think we have all felt that too, including me. I expected recovery to be a linear process; I would just feel a little less bad every day, until eventually I felt good. Sorry buddy, it just isn't that way; at least it wasn't for me. I had lots of ups and downs, am still having them at 6 months post radiation. Right now,while I can taste all food, that doesn't mean any of it it tastes anything like it did prior to treatment. In fact, lots of it tastes pretty bad. Ice cream tastes bad (or no taste at all). I'm still waiting on a cheeseburger that tastes even close to what it did prior to treatment (french fries are okay though). Steak is halfway good, but most chicken is bland, particularly chicken breast.

I still have a lot of sinus drainage that dries in throat and makes it hard to swallow. Using a sinus irrigator helps that problem a lot, so it gets used daily.

Keep fighting, many people on the forum have told me recovery is often measured in years, not weeks or months. I didn't believe them at first, but now that I'm six months into this I see they were right. I'm way better than I was immediately after radiation ended, but I'm not anywhere near back to normal yet; it may never come. If that's the case, so be it.

Good luck, keep fighting
Tony

Thanks so much for your comments!! I must accept the situation regardless of what happens. The ent Dr gave better understanding of my condition. Regards Vernon