Hi, has anyone developed herpes after being treated, and run down from oral cancer? This is what they say my sister has. Her tongue and throat are in extreme pain. I am going crazy because I can't believe the pain she is in after two years. She had multiple tests saying its not a re-occurence. She now is on Famvir for herpes and no results are coming from this. Then I try and pursuade her husband to get her the feeding tube , she has lost like 25 pounds in 4 months, is on an Ensure diet of 2500 calories. I just dont beleive that Ensure can possibly be giving her the nutrients she needs. Also, when I mentioned this today, her husband said that if she gets on the feeding tube she might lose her abiltity to swallow all together if she is on it to long. I am ready just to go over there myself and drag her to the hospital. I called her today and she could barely speak. Any advice is appreciated. We all just don't know what to do. Its been like 4 months and progressively getting worse. No doctors have any answers.

Well, there is some misinformation going around here. First there is no case for losing completely your ability to swallow after a year on the tube. I am a perfect example. I was on the tube 100% for a year and when I started back on real food, (blender drinks, canned peaches, scrambled eggs, etc.) my throat was still sore and it was difficult. Plus the xerostomia was in its most acute stage. But the difficult transition back to eating regular food and swallowing easily, while it took some time, had nothing to do with the tube. Second, THE ONLY thing that I poured nutrition-wise into my tube, was Ensure. I am living proof that with no other forms of nutrition, you can maintain your body weight on this stuff. When I was making the transition to solid food again, it was still my nutritional staple orally, since you cannot get enough out of scrambled eggs and canned peaches to do the job. So I still drank 8 cans of it a day.

As to the herpes - When your immune system is really beat up and your cell counts are low, every opportunistic thing gets a hold of you. This is part of the reason that the recovery process is so mentally depressing. As soon as you get rid of one thing, another comes along. If you had herpes before cancer for instance, (you have herpes for life), it will reoccur when your immune system is depressed. When I get stressed out and my immune system is affected by that, I get a fever blister on my lip. This is a herpes simplex lesion, no matter what you call it. Her body is stressed out to the max, her immune system is not 100%, and herpes will come out and become active during this period. So will fungal infections (Candida), and other common viruses like rhino viruses (colds) etc. It just never seems to end until your counts go back up, and your immune system kicks back in. There is no such thing as a viracide. We do not have the technology to kill viruses. The most that we can do is use drugs which suppress their activity.

The doctors should be monitoring her nutritional intake and body weight. There is a point where they should step in. I cannot tell you where this is for her, but they absolutely should be on top of this. If the anti virals work, she may be able to get enough Ensure or other nutritional liquids down each day to not use the tube.

Hi Brian, thanks for the response. You mentioned Candida and have mentioned this several times in other postings. Is this Candidal Esophagitis you are talking about? Is this common with oral cancer patients? Have you had it yourself? What is Candida?

Thank you for your help.

Candida, (Candida albicans) is a fungal disease. Yeasts have become increasingly significant as pathogens in all fields of medicine. This is particularly true of those which are saprophytes (they live by eating dead tissue instead of living tissue), because of their opportunistic behavior towards the altered/compromised condition of their host. Fungi are part of the world of plants, not bacteria, and there are about 100,000 distinct types of them. 50 types cause disease in humans. Most cause something beneficial, like those used in fermentation or purfication. In people they are common, and usually harmless companions of our skin tissues, and live as inhabitants of our mucous membranes in our mouth, vaginal tract etc. as symbiotic saprophytes. The outbreaks of acute episodes where these fungi