I have received radiation for throat cancer (squamous cell) - I have a primary tumor on the base of my tongue, and another couple on the sides of my neck in the lymph nodes. I am still receiving chemotherapy, which will continue for a couple months more, but my question to everyone is: when will this mucus that I constantly spit up stop? My radiation ended several weeks ago and I have not had any slow-down of symptoms. I have a G-tube, and have not taken food orally for 6-7 weeks. Constantly hacking up mucus cannot possibly help the healing process. I am truly suffering with symptoms of pain, but most especially this mucus! If anyone knows anything, please help!
Thanks, Rick

hey Rick,

My friend was diagnosed in April 04 of SCC. Tumor on his tonsil and 8 lymph nodes. He had 3 rounds of chemo and 38 radiation treatments which made him unable to swallow for months. He had a peg feeding tube inserted into his stomach. Anyway it petscan in November showed all clear! :bouncing: His readiation ended in July and he had several months of the mucus. He started eating soft foods in Sept but the dry mouth is still a problem! The mucus was sometimes bloody because he had no salivary glands so don't be alarmed if you have some blood. It will get better but it takes time.Be patient.His doctor said the raspy voice, mucus and other side effects can take up to a year to go away. What stage was your cancer and when did treatment end?If I can help, let me know!God bless, I know this is very hard to go through. :angel:

They never told me what stage my cancer was but treatment ended 3 weeks ago after twice a day radiation for 37 days. Voice is still a hurtful whisper. What types of soft food did your friend start with? I just feel that I wont make any real progress until I begin eating.

If your only 3 weeks out of treatment you have a ways to go. Did you have a feeding tube or can you eat by mouth? His voice was, I guess still is some days, raspier than others. But he had the hardest time swallowing after treatment.He had to have all his teeth pulled before treatment too which is very hard on a 38 year old. Like I said it wasn't until September that he could try eating and some taste buds came back. He ate things like oatmeal, eggs and mashed potatoes with alot of gravy. Alot of water with everything. Do you suffer with dry mouth as well? :rolleyes: My friend needs to gain weight though, he is up to 122 lbs from his lowest 114. He was always small and has a hard time gaining weight. I told him to drink boost or ensure but he said he lived on that for so long with the peg tube it makes him sick so smell it. :eek: Before he got sick he was 150 lbs. If you have any suggestions, let us know. I am here to answer any questions for you if you need. Please be patient though, the recovery takes a while. Depression can be a problem after cancer too. My friend was a singer that was his passion, don't know if he will ever again so that is hard. I wish he would join a support group but we couldn't find one with younger people in Florida where he lives. Hope this helps!God bless!

Dear UNKRBK
So sorry to hear of your cancer. My brother finished his Chemo and 34 Radium sessions just three weeks ago. He had a peg tube from week 2 of treatment. He also had that nasty problem with thick mucus in his throat. The cause of this is due to the treatment as his saliva glands were killed as a result of treatment. He now suffers from cronic dry mouth. He only started eating last week porriage, mash, liquidised stews, drinks like Ovaltine. He also took to drinking the Ensure which he was getting through his peg. He also said that food did not taste good at all but it is the best way to stimulate salivary glands. They road to recovery is long and hard unfortunately.
Sorry for not having more positive and direct information.
Will include you in my prayers.
Take care and good luck.
Casta

I forgot to ask in my previous post, did you have surgery also?

I did not have surgery. Going into this I decided against surgery because it would remove part of my tongue. I may need surgery on the lymph glands later though.

If your only 3 weeks out of treatment you have a ways to go. Did you have a feeding tube or can you eat by mouth? His voice was, I guess still is some days, raspier than others. But he had the hardest time swallowing after treatment.He had to have all his teeth pulled before treatment too which is very hard on a 38 year old. Like I said it wasn't until September that he could try eating and some taste buds came back. He ate things like oatmeal, eggs and mashed potatoes with alot of gravy. Alot of water with everything. Do you suffer with dry mouth as well? :rolleyes: My friend needs to gain weight though, he is up to 122 lbs from his lowest 114. He was always small and has a hard time gaining weight. I told him to drink boost or ensure but he said he lived on that for so long with the peg tube it makes him sick so smell it. :eek: Before he got sick he was 150 lbs. If you have any suggestions, let us know. I am here to answer any questions for you if you need. Please be patient though, the recovery takes a while. Depression can be a problem after cancer too. My friend was a singer that was his passion, don't know if he will ever again so that is hard. I wish he would join a support group but we couldn't find one with younger people in Florida where he lives. Hope this helps!God bless!


When will you have your scans to see if your clear?

I am very new to the board but I can relate to your situations. I too have been treated for throat cancer. I had it on my tonsil and it started to lean on my jaw muscle. Before I was diagnosed with cancer my jaw locked up and since then I can only open to 1cm. It will be 1 year in march since treatment began for me. I just had my feeding tube removed about 2 weeks ago and I still struggle with eating because of a dry mouth and the lack of opening I have. My doctors are telling me that there is nothing they can do for my mouth but I cannot accept this. Has anyone heard of any procedures that can help me? :( :confused:

sweet ti,
I am very sorry you had to go through this. I feel the treatment for head & neck cancers are barbaric to say the least. What stage were you and what treatment did you have? My friend didn't have surgery, but the radiation killed his salivary glands. He had radiation to both sides of the neck. He is still struggling to find something that will help his dry mouth. There is a pill called salegen tablets that may help you if you have some saliva. :confused: My friend also struggles because of having all his teeth removed and getting dentures, he is 38. If you don't mind, how old are you?I am still searching for a helpful product for him and he sees his ENT on Wed & will talk to him AGAIN. Keep your chin up and keep fighting! LEt me know if I can help ! :angel:

Hi again, I just read your reply. Thank you. I was at stage 3 cancer. I just turned 44 in January. I have just started taking the salagen pills. I am very sorry to hear about your friend. I hope he will be alright. Please tell him that he is in my prayers. I had 7 weeks of radiation on my right side of my neck. And also 2 weeks of chemo. I had to spend 5 weeks in the hospital because of the treatment. I just had my feeding tube removed about 3 weeks ago. I am still not able to eat everything because of the dry mouth and I can only open to 1 cm so I cannot chew very well. I am just learning how to get around on the message board so it took me a while to find where I had posted this reply. I feel like a big dummy. :dizzy: Your friend is young to have to go through this. I feel for him. I read a man's diary from the internet that had gone through throat cancer. He suggested to drink a lot of water, 2 litres a day to stimulate the saliva glands and he felt an improvement. I am drinking a lot of water and hopefully I will get better. My biggest problem right now is to open my mouth. I am exercising it every day and hopefully can find a doctor that can help me. Thank you again for your reply and my prayers are with your friend. :angel:

Sweet Ti,

I am sorry for what you are going through. I hope you find the help you need.

Would you mind telling us how you found the cancer? I am 43 and have had one sided throat pain that comes and goes.

DawnP

sweet ti,

Thank you for the prayers, you will be in ours as well. :angel: My friend has a check up today so he will see about the dry mouth. I don't think there is much more to try. :eek: He does drink alot of water but then he is up all night going to the bathroom. This is really tough, you know you think after you get the all clear everything is okay but then you have all the side effects after. :confused: It's a tough road. But God is good so hopefully he will take care of us, right???Please let me know if I can help, will let u know about the doctors appnt this afternoon. God bless!!! :)

Hi Dawn. It took me a while to discover that I had cancer. I had a sore throat for the longest time and bad earache. I thought it was strep throat because there was at least five people at work with it. I went to the doctors several times and they prescribed antibiotics, thinking it was my tonsils. By the time they realized it was cancer, my mouth started to get worst and I had a hard time opening it.
If you have a sore throat and it hurts when you swallow than don't waste any time...go get it checked out. I wish I would have known more about throat cancer in the early stages. The bad thing about throat cancer is that is uncommonly found in woman of my age group so doctor's are not looking for that when you go in with a sore throat. That is what happened in my case. I was told it is caused from heavy drinking and smoking. I was not a heavy drinker at all and yes I did smoke but not heavily....half a pack a day, but I guess it was enough to harm me. I think it is one of many symptoms. I have quit smoking since finding out and will never smoke again. Take care for now and thank you both for your concern. :wave:

Sweet ti,

My friend met with his ENT yesterday. The doctor said he is doing great. He says he is amazed that the tumor on his tonsil was the size of a golfball and is now gone.I believe that prayer did this! His tissue is pink and healthy. The doc won't see him for 3 months now. HE had a little bit of saliva and more may come back, may not. :confused: His weight is still down but he was never very big anyway. The doc says everything just takes time after treatment. It can take up to a year for side effects to go away. I know it is very hard but please try to be patient. I will continue to pray for you! Stay as positive as you can! You fought this...keep your chin up! :)

Hi Dawn. Thank you for your reply. I am familiar with the web site in the uk. I have been through physio treatment and I am using a devise called therabite to help in opening my mouth. I have been at it for several months now and I am getting frustrated because it is a very painful and slow progress. I heard of an operation for trismus that involved scraping away scarr tissue and this helps with returning to a normal mouth opening, but I was told it would not help me because of the cancer and radiation. I have not given up but I will continue to exercise every day.
In response to your question regarding my home condition. I am a single parent and have 4 kids but the 2 older ones live on their own. I do have a special person in my life that has been very supportive to me but we don't live together yet. I met him a year before I got cancer. :) He has given me the strength that I needed to fight cancer. I have had a lot of support from both family and friends. Without that kind of love and support it would have been easy to give up. I had no idea how bad cancer was. I am very grateful to have survived it and will keep fighting for a full recovery. :wave: Talk to you soon. bye for now.

I am very new to the board but I can relate to your situations. I too have been treated for throat cancer. I had it on my tonsil and it started to lean on my jaw muscle. Before I was diagnosed with cancer my jaw locked up and since then I can only open to 1cm. It will be 1 year in march since treatment began for me. I just had my feeding tube removed about 2 weeks ago and I still struggle with eating because of a dry mouth and the lack of opening I have. My doctors are telling me that there is nothing they can do for my mouth but I cannot accept this. Has anyone heard of any procedures that can help me? :( :confused:

sweet_ti, there is "Therabite". It is a medical device you use to slowly increase the amount you can open your mouth. A search will give U the info. Best results if one uses it several times a day. And you control how far & how strong with your hand. I have one now, got it from ENT thru the speach group at my VA hospital. It comes with a demo video.

The 'normal' opening is 3 fingers wide. BobE ('99 throat cancer surgery)

Hi there
I sometimes don't know where to post in the cancer topics as I have squamous cell cancer in stage iv of the base of the tongue. It's very agressive and invasive. I'm waiting to see a chemo doctor to see what it will do for me and if my body will take it as I've lost so much weight.
I was interested when you said about the mucous as one part of my cancer is what they call mucoepidermoid. An over-production of mucous. It is not only annoying but also disgusting. Sometimes it is so thick, I cannot believe it. If anyone out there has suggestions as to how to ease the mucous, please write.
I also use a product like Ensure or Boost. I was on those, but found them too expensive and couldn't afford it, so my ENT doc wrote a prescription for something called Resource to help me with not only the weight but I can't eat solid foods anymore. Almost everything is liquified and also kinda boring!
Will keep checking back.
Thanks for the the input in these boards. It is very comforting to know.

Sandra

I am writing this from Houston, Texas as my husband is undergoing treatment for his cancer here at MD Anderson (best in the USA). He was shaving in early February when he noticed a swollen lymph node on the right side of his neck. To make a long story shorter, after two rounds of antibiotics, a CT scan, an MRI and a (benign) Fine Needle Aspiration, we scheduled surgery for what we thought (and were told by the ENT docs in our home town) was the removal of a lymph node that had just decided to grow into a cyst-like node. At the eleventh hour, the new young surgeon in our ENT's office asked my husband if he would come into the office for one more FNA. This time he not only withdrew fluid and put it into another fluid to send off to the pathologist, but he immediately took the withdrawn fluid and put it on slides to send to pathology. (Our main doc did not do this with the first FNA.) Less than 48-hours later he was called in and told that he had Squamous Cell Cancer, with the Point of Origin unknown.

After we calmed down a little (my husband is 54, has NEVER smoked and we are social drinkers of wine only), they told us they wanted to perform a radical neck dissection followed by five weeks of radiation. After about a thousand prayers to God for wisdom and guidance, we decided to stall the surgery and go to Houston for a second opinion. Within five minutes in the ENT doctor's office here at MDA, he pronounced to us and the other doctors in the room, "I believe the Point of Origin may be in his right tonsil. It feels full to me." While the other residents felt my husband's tonsil, we marvelled at how we had wasted almost two months and numerous visits to our ENT (the "best" in town) and he NEVER felt his tonsils.

My husband is in Stage 3 (since it spred from his tonsil to his lymph node) and never once felt any pain from either the node or the tonsil. Never. MDA performed diagnostic surgery on him to confirm the P of O and sure enough, it is the right tonsil! They decided in the OR not to do a tonsillectomy as that would take weeks to heal enough for him to begin his radiation treatments (IMRT). So here we are, at the best cancer center we know of, with no income and no job and strictly here on Faith getting daily (5 x week) IMRT and praying for that node to shrink. They performed a PET scan and a CT scan on him and determined that the cancer has not spred to any other nodes, so he wouldn't have to have chemotherapy also. (They originally thought that he would take both radiation and chemo at the same time.) His node is rather large and we sure would like to see it shrink down from the original size of 3.2 cms, but today at our weekly "see" visit, the doctor said that he may add a few treatments to the original schedule of 32 IMRT's. He commented on how that "node is sure resistant". Worrisome. . .

So for any of you out there who have a painful node, it's probably not cancer. I'm sitting here typing right now with a sore throat and a swollen node on my right side. Probably sympathy pains! He's being treated "uni-laterally" but has still lost his taste buds almost completely. My job is to get him to consume as many calories each day as possible which is hard to do as his throat is getting sores and hurts badly and his tongue is swollen and very painful. Ice cream, pudding, Ensure Plus, Boost, etc. are great to supplement his diet. He's now had 18 treatments and has only lost five pounds, due to great diligence on his part. He's had to learn to manage the pain from the radiation with SaliCept mouth wash for oral wounds and Lortab liquid.

I'll be happy to answer anyone's questions about this awful disease, if I can. God Bless all of you who have health problems!!!

Graham,


I am sorry to hear of the diagnosis. My friend was diagnosed with Squamous cell stage 4 March 31,04.It was his left tonsil with 8 lyph nodes involved. So I know what your going through. Its a hard road but he is now a year out of tx and doing very well. His taste buds are back and he can eat almost anything except bread. The dry mouth is his biggest problem. :p You guys will get through this, but be patient after tx, it takes time for recovery!God bless! :)

Thank you for your encouragement! We sure do need it! The lymph node is really resisting the radiation, but next Thursday he'll receive 2 IMRT's. This past WEdnesday and Thursday he received a second treatment in the afternoons of electrons only. He isn't in any more pain than he was last week and that's a good thing, but has to take his Lortab liquid about ten minutes before attempting to eat anything. We are determined and committed to keeping the calorie intake up so he won't have to have that feeding tube inseted.

God Bless all of you with health problems!

Gram04,
Please be careful with the liquid lortab, its very addictive. :rolleyes: I know though without it, its very hard to swallow. My friend would say it was like swallowing razor blades! If he needs the peg tube, it isn't necessarily a bad thing. My friend was small to begin with so I think the peg tube saved his life. He couldn't eat by mouth at all so the only nutrition he got was from the boost in his peg tube.Enen after tx, he used it for added calories. :p Eating didn't come until a little over a month after tx. Feeling good again after tx takes time, watch it by weeks not days and it will come. Tx for this kind of cancer is barbaric and I pray someday it will be different.Hang in there~my prayers are with you! Write me if you need to! :)

Hi everyone,
My Hubby just went through 35 radiation sessions for cancer of unknown primary, so I can really relate with what you're saying. I do have a question though. He normally wears dentures but can't right now, and I was wondering if you, or your friend has had "toothache" like pains? He has a peg, so can't orally eat and is getting rather concerned about this pain.
I hear you about the weight loss, he's gone from 200 to 165-166. No strenght or stamina. The thought of "eating" brings tears to his eyes, tried eating some pudding and hurt so bad he was almost sick.
Trongel

trongel,

First of all let me say I am sorry you & your hubby are going through this. Its very tough.You didn't say if it was a head & neck cancer but I assumed it was since he can't eat. When did he finish his radiation txs? My friend mentioned about having sores in his mouth from chemo but nothing like toothache pains.I am sure its very possible though from radiation.Recovery after radiation takes a good bit of time. I remember once my friend finished tx, he thought he could eat right away. Wrong! It took a good month to even be able to eat soup. The swallowing was horrendous pain.Tell hubby it will take some time, use the peg for now as much as possiblefor nutrition needed for recovery, my friend is also having trouble gaining his weight back.He is small though and needs it!!Alot of bones showing.:( Check with your doc about the toothache pains, but it wouldn't surprise me that its from radiation in that area. Please keep me posted on his recovery.I hope this helps!God bless!!!

Thank you,
He finished his treatments May 13th( Lucky Friday). He had originally found a lump under his jaw, it was biopsied as a squamus cell, with an unknown primary.
It has been real rough on him as he's a very outdoor man, do it yourself type of person. And this thing has reduced him to a, thin dilapidated person. Very depressing for me, to see it. Even worse for him. But, as my son says "every day above ground is a good day", he has lost both lower limbs to Buergers disease. (my son, that is)
But as I told hubby,Gale, every day forward is one step closer to recoverying. I try to be strong for both of us.
again, thank you

Its tough having to be the strong one, that was me for a good 8-9 months. My friend didn't have much of a support system so I tried to be it, even though we are in different states.I know what you mean about the changes though. When I first saw him a few weeks after tx I couldn't believe it. He was 37 & looked 75! No teeth, his hair was thinner and he lost so much weight. I was terribly upset. But now its sooo much better. He is at his 1 year mark in July. What a difference!!!He is pretty much back to his old self. He got a new HArley, he says thats his therapy.lol He rides alot, is working full time and is eating everything in sight to gain his weight back. His voice sounds better and he is getting saliva back. The only thing is he hates his dentures. They don't look like his teeth so he feels he looks so different.He is also very thin but is hoping to change that.Tell hubby this will pass, it just takes time. Give it a good 5 months and he will see alot of changes.He has to be patient. When I look back it seemed to take forever but now I think it went so fast. Hubby needs to rest and take as much Ensure & Boost as he can. He will use up calories in healing his body.It will come! Take time for you too! And I love your sons attitude~ thats great! I'm here if you have anymore questions or just need to vent! Hugs~God bless!

Thank you, your words are really assuring.

Hello, My husband is recovering from throat cancer. He had 38 radiation treatments as well as 6 chemo treatment and he had the same problem as your friend. The ensure and boost really would not go down because he too could not get past the smell. He originally weighed 183 lbs. and lost down to 153. A wonderful dietician at the cancer center told us about a new product on the market which is Carnation Instant Breakfast VHC and it is 560 calaries a can. He drinks four cans a day and has already gained 15 lbs. in approximately 1 and 1/2 months. He gets this through his home health care provider. The taste is not bad and it has really been a life-saver for us. Hope this helps.

Melanie

Melanie,
Thanks for the info but I have already found this product & my friend has been using it.It is too early to tell if its making a difference.Keeping our fingers crossed!How is your husband?When did he finish treatment? My friend is 1 year & 5 months out.Dry mouth is the biggest problem. I hope your husband is doing very well! :angel: