Don,

Also swallow the Carnation IB VHC which has 560 calories in a small 8 oz can. I didn't have the Peg and believe me I wanted to swallow the least amount I could to get the recommended 2000 cals per day so I only had to deal with 4 cans a day. Looking back I wish I would have been told to down 3000 cals a day because 2000 just didn't cut the calories my body needed to maintain itself while being tortured.

Well today was Rad 16. The start of weeks four.
Stephanie was right. I have the Thrush.

I think one of my RO's at first thought I was getting carried away with Internet diagnosis, but when she looked it was the Thrush! Then she remembered that I had antibiotics before RT and said it is quite common when a patient has been on antibiotics.

She prescribed Nystatin and when I picked it up the pharmacy lady told me it tasted awful (as if I had any taste buds left).
Anyway just telling me it tastes awful is enough to freak me out. So yesterday the Nystatin stayed on the shelf, but today my Dietitian asked if I had taken it and she laid down the law.
Also she got on my case about not using enough Nutren since now I am not eating enough.

When I got home I took the Nystatin (then a can of Nutren). Actually I thought the Nystatin tasted quite good!

Maybe like Stephanie said, the Nystatin will kill the Thrush and re-incarnate a few taste buds and I can keep eating food for a while longer (avoiding the PEG)

My lady frog and her muck pond is now a back-burner issue. It is now all a matter of taste. Mouth remains fine, free of sores (just a few little bumps)dry mouth at night. Throat is a bit sore but I can still swallow soft stuff and I am not in any pain, but sometimes I do feel like I have been thrown under a bus

Checked on the pain patches and the RO said they can have side effects and she only uses them when Lortab and similar meds are not working. Of course right now I don't really have any pain.

The first round with Nystatin for my thrush I gagged everytime I took it and threw up a few other times from the taste. But I threw up at the drop of a hat at that time anyway (I was on a formula that was not settling well in my stomach and kept making me sick) The good news is, I definitely got some of my taste back after a few days on the stuff! I'm so glad it's something fixable for you and now hopefully you will get some of your taste buds back! But now you'll have to watch out that you don't get it again. I got it again later in radiation, but I knew what it was and what to do that time.

Hi Stephanie,
I am actually not sure what the Thrush is. Yeasty mucky yuck I think, so I will be sure to have my RO double check next week.

Hate to say it but the Nystatin is the best thing I have tasted all day! My taste buds must really be messed up

Now that you are a week out of treatment, how are things going?

Yeah, thrush is a build up of yeast. For me I got a build up of white stuff on my gums that would come off if I rubbed my finger over it. I got it from using mouthwash compulsively. You can also get it from eating too much sugar and also from the antibiotics as well! That's my two cent explanation. I'm sure Wikipedia does a much better job!

Thrush...a wonderful side affect of treatment for so many things.
To diagnose thrush, candida albicans, a swab of the offending whitish area must be taken and observed under a microscope. Thrush is an opportunistic part of the oral flora that will establish itself in the abscense of normal flora or where oral tissues are or have been compromised/injured and are going through normal healing or an antibiotic has compromised the normal microbiological flora. Once it establishes itself it will spread over other oral tissues.
Thrush is not pretty or pleasant and must be treated. An area in your mouth that appears whitish and you can wipe off, then recurs looking the same within 12 or so hours after is most likely thrush.
Talk to your docs as soon as you suspect thrush. There are simple solutions to combat this problem. Oral anti-fungals such as Diflucan (one dose) can eliminate it. Oral rinses with nystatin suspension are also effective.
My point, get it diagnosed and then get rid of it.
If anyone has questions let me know.
Cheers,
Mike

As with many of the question here, the main OCF site has the basic info that you need to understand this. http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/dental/candida.htm

By the by, while we have discussed this before about Wikipedia, I state it here one more time. Go to any page you like in the site, sign into Wiki, then put on that page that the moon is made of green cheese. What you will see is that it is accepted and the page is changed. Oh for sure, at some point down the road a monitor will read the page or a bot will check and hopefully fix your changes.... but how may people will read it before it's corrected? As a place to get some starting ideas OK. Definitive answers, I think less so.

Their oral cancer page, I have changed a gazillion times, and sure as shit someone goes in, that has outdated info, and changes my changes to something else.... I would not trust serious inquiry to this source.

Yes, I do know that anyone can change whatever they want to on the site, whenever they want, to whatever they want. It was more as a joke than anything else, showing my limited knowledge on the subject and that it would be best to look elsewhere to find a more thorough explanation if one was needed! I do apologize if I stepped on any toes!

Nothing to apologize for, no toes stepped on. But the web is chock full of bad info. Since you were new here, I did not mean to challenge your fact finding, or you personally, I just wanted to make you aware of something that has come up before.

Okay! Thanks for the info! It always pops up first on a google search so I usually use it as a starting point and then proceed spending the rest of the night checking other websites for information. You would think I would wait until morning and just call my doctor. But oooooh that would be too easy!!!