Hang in there? Patience.

Michael, I'm not going to discourage you by telling you how long it took for the phlegm to go away for me because I seem to be really on the long end of average recovery time from radiation in all sorts of ways.

But maybe it will help to hear that I completely understand how frustrating the waking every 40 mins and constant spitting of mouth-gunk is. Yes, it IS gross--but we've all been there I think so its OK to talk and moan and groan about it if you need to.

As you know already I think, many people here have found a suciton machine helped--it irritated my mouth too much to use at the power of suction it needed to have to get significant amounts of thick phlegm it was also sucking my gums and cheeks and that hurt. But I'd recommend trying it.

I also did get SOME relief from the Mucinex/guafensin. If you can't swallow the big Mucinex tablets (I couldn't--and you can't grind them down to flush through the PEG), you can buy generic "Tussin" cough syrup that has nothing but guafenesin in it and put that through your PEG (you have to do it every 3-4 hours). It helped make the phlegm a little less viscous--so when I did swallow it I was less likely to vomit--it didn't make it go away entirely by any means. though.

I relly am sorry you are feeling so awful. I rememebr very clearly how ycuky the weeks immediately following rad were for me. Just rememebr time passes and this will pass and you will heal.

Nelie