My husband lacks 4 rads. Starting yesterday, he is gagging, etc on a sudden barrage of thick stringy mucus. He is very finicky & has not given into anything for rad burns, throat issues, etc. In fact, today, he finally let me crush a nausea pill & put it thru his peg tube. He is on 8 cans of Osmolite (350 calories per can) + 5 syringes of water with each feeding. He is using the baking soda/ salt solution for swishing. He is also trying some ginger ale. Does anyone have any other suggestions? I know these symptoms will not magically disappear at treatment end, so I really need some home remidies he might try. Thanks so much.

The rope mucus usually starts the last two weeks, continuing until two weeks post treatment. Keep brushing. and using mouth rinses, and I use biotne products. Mucunex, robitussm may help, rinsing with pineapple or papaya juice, meat tenderizer rinse mixed with water, and club soda. some get a suction machine for home use, called an aspirator, avaiable by presciption from a durable medical goods store. There are pre moistined oral care sponges on sticks, usually in green, yellow or pink, which I was given in the hospital to help clean the teeth, gums, and was good to get out some mucus. I hope this helps.

The thick ropey choking mucous will continue for a few weeks. Using a water pik will help to get rid of the gunk. Rinsing at least 4 times a day with a mixture of 16 oz warm water, 2 tsp baking soda and 2 tsp of salt will also help stabilize the ph balance in his sensitive mouth. The gunk usually hangs around until 3 or 4 weeks post rads then it is magically gone to be immediately replaced by dry mouth. Ask the doc for a prescription for a suction machine, it really will help. Plus when he goes for treatment, ask the nurses to suction the gunk out. This will help alot!

Best wishes!

Have you tried flat club soda? It works in the same way as the baking soda solution except that the patient can swallow it. John was advised to swish with the club soda, spit out the gunk it loosens and then swallow a small second mouthful. The water pik Christine mentioned works great too.

Vik

The cancer lingo is tricky. Mucousitis does not mean all that thick mucous, instead it means mouth sores. But it does cause mucous. Very few posters here on the forum take advantage of all the great knowledge on the Main OCF web page. Sure it's all in strict medical talk and vetted by Brian's boards (I keep trying to have him let me post my top ten lists without being so "correct") but in this case, it's helpful. Just click on this link to read all about mucositis and mucous from OCF
OCF mucositis

In addition, I had samples of Caphosol given to me and they helped. There have been several posts about it but it's expensive and unclear whether any more effective than the home remedies given you and on the OCF web page above
It gets better
keep the Faith
Charm

Further to the above, the thick "rope" mucus is from damage over time to the salivary glands from chemo, and radiation, which causes xerostomia, dry mouth, which causes mucositus, a painful inflammation, and ulceration of the mucus lining, which occurs in 80 percent of patients. When chemo stops, the saliva will improve, but not always from radiation, and depends on the radiation dosage to the parotid gland if it was radiated, which produces about 60-65 percent saliva that is all watery saliva, 20-30 percent is by the submambular and 2-5 percent by sublingual glands both which produce a mixture of watery, and mostly thick saliva, which is yellowish, so you may see a color change in the mucus too. Radiation damage is mostly to the thin watery saliva (parotid gland) and thick mucus is less involved. When these glands start recovering, even if the parotid gland is fully damaged, usually after 26Gy, the others may start producing more saliva to compensate the loss.

For what it's worth, when my husband hit the overload of mucus phase during treatment, they also prescribed something to help dry it up...sorry, I don't remember the name, perhaps someone else here had a similar experience. It really helped.

Danny's ENT oncologist prescribed scopolamine 1.5 mg patches (yes, the ones you put behind your ear for sea sickness) They took a couple weeks for the full effect, but after that, the mucus problem lessened each day. He is now 4 weeks post treatment & we have discontinued using them. He is still using peg tube for most calories, but is eating more soft foods each day. Of course, having all his teeth removed prior to radiation does not help with the choices he has in eating real food.
We go for his first endescope in April & first scan in May. Each day I can see small improvements, which I will gladly take. It may be a slow go, but at least we are going.
Thanks for the advise & answers you shared & if you didn't know about the patches it might be something you mention to your doctor.

Any of the old style anti-histamines (for allergy and travel sickness) cause dry mouth as part of their side effect profile (anti-cholinergics). It didn't work for Alex but maybe your pharmacist can help?

Unfortunately, nothing worked for Alex except time. We tried using agents to dry the mucous as well as agents to try and make it less stringy. I recorded how much mucous he had, how often he had to spit, how many times he had choked that day etc (drove him mad but but he humoured me).

The only thing that gave Alex some relief was clearing it out of his mouth manually. Swishing with the liquids recommended by others will help do this. The Water Pik was Alex's favourite and he still uses today as he gets "foam" now. Not as thick as what he first experienced but thick enough to get in the way of his speech at times and difficult to swallow effectively.