Hello friends! Ever since treatment (partial glossectomy, chemo, and rad 9 years ago) I have severe oral thrush always. I go on 14 day regimen of fluconazol, clears up, then after 2 weeks I’m back on fluconazol. Anyone else experience this? I’ve tried clotrimazole lozenges but they didn’t seem to work and made me extremely nauseous (which I had to take 5x a day). I’ve tried the fluconazol swishes, nystatin cream for my lips when it spreads that far, a candidia diet eating yogurt and cutting sugars that feed it, tried homemade swishes all just to revert back to the fluconazol cycle.

Just curious if anyone else is running into this and has something that is working for them long term! Thank you!

I’m sorry to hear about your struggles but I would like to assure you that this is actually quite common after oral cancer treatment. I have suffered through the same sequence of events for many years now. I was diagnosed 18 years ago and am 16 years post treatment. I flip flopped from bacterial infections and Candida. Fortunately my docs give me a prescription for continuous Fluconazole and Clotrimazole troches as well as Nystatin. After so many occurrences I know when it’s time to start anti-fungals. They do alleviate the infection, but sorry to say, in my experience it’s a non-ending cycle. Hang in there.

… I also wanted to mention something you may not be aware of: Once there is a fungal infection that’s in need of eradication, Fluconazole will kill it, but as the anti fungal starts working and the fungus dies off, it will release toxins into your body that will make you feel way sicker than the actual fungal infection did. From my understanding it’s because the dead fungal components act like poison to our bodies, it passes in a couple of days.

Oof. Thank you Stephen! I was hoping there would be some sort of hope for an end to this madness but it is what it is I guess! Could be worse in the grand scheme of things. Thanks again for your reply and congrats on 16 years!

I hope my post hasn’t offended you or caused you to lose faith. My experiences may not be the same as yours.

I would however suggest the following:

Find a doc who will give you a running/continuous script for whatever anti fungals they deem appropriate; who will trust you to use when necessary. You know your body better than anyone and you will know when it’s time to take a Fluconazole or swish Nystatin, and/or use Clotrimazole Troches.

Despite what I have read I’ve never found any correlation between what I’m eating and the occurrence of Candida.

In my opinion in folks like us it just gets out of control sometimes and so then we take an antifungal, and it’s eradicated until the next time.

It could be so much worse. Don’t let it get you down. There are (as I’m sure you know) many things that cannot be cured with a “pill”.