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Topic
Jamie posted
5 months ago
Tips for Getting Through Chemo
Top 5 tips for getting through chemo
These are just my own top 5 - they won’t help everybody, and I’ll probably think of another 5 as soon as I’ve posted. This post will only include Tip No. 1. Stay tuned for the rest…
IMPORTANT NOTE: These tips are not medical advice. They’re just some everyday things I’ve found useful in helping my partner when she was on chemo. They've also been useful for me. You’d better check with your oncologist, chemo nurse or nutritionist to make sure your treatment is good to go with these suggestions.
Tip No. 1: Prevent/reduce mouth ulcers by rinsing with bicarb of soda.
One of the worst side effects some people get with chemo is mouth ulcers and damaged taste buds. It makes eating painful, and can make food taste like zinc-coated cardboard. Bicarb of soda is a very cheap and effective way of stopping ulcers before they get started, or at least making them more manageable. It can also help them heal if you’ve already got them, but this sometimes takes quite a while if you’re on continuing treatment.
If your specialist says it’s okay for you to rinse your mouth with bicarb, it’s best to start before you have any mouth ulcers if possible. You can start off with a fairly weak solution before treatment, and make it stronger if you start to notice any ulcers, or other side effects that tell you your body is reacting to the chemo.
Buy the cheapest box of bicarb from the supermarket (usually in the same aisle as flour and other cooking stuff, but sometimes also with laundry stuff). It might be labelled as “Baking soda”, or “Bicarbonate of soda”, or “Sodium Bicarbonate”.
Make sure you have a big drink of water before rinsing. Bicarb is high in sodium, so it’ll dry your mouth out quite a bit when you use it.
Put a teaspoon or so of bicarb in a glass, and dissolve it with about three mouthfuls of water. You’ll figure out how strong to make it after a few tries. Use slightly warm water—it helps dissolve the powder, and it’s also more comfortable for rinsing.
Swish a mouthful of the stuff around for about 30 seconds, spit, then repeat till it’s all gone. It should taste fairly salty, but if you think it tastes too strong, water it down a bit at first. If you’ve already got ulcers, it might sting quite a bit when you first start using it. But it shouldn’t be so strong that it burns your mouth when you’re ulcer-free.
Rinse like this at least twice a day. I wouldn’t do it more than three or four times, though, because you absorb some of the sodium each time you rinse, and as you probably know, too much sodium isn’t great for your health. (Ulcers aren’t great for your health either, though, so you’ve got to balance these things.)
If you can’t stand the salty taste, shell out for some xylitol from your health food store. This is a naturally occurring sweetener that won’t rot your teeth. (In fact it’s been shown to help prevent tooth decay, so you can feel good about using it. But that's a whole other story...) Mix in as much xylitol as you need to make the taste tolerable, and rinse away!
Be sure not to eat, drink, brush your teeth or rinse your mouth for at least half an hour after rinsing, just to let the bicarb do its work.
If this doesn’t work, or you’d like to try some other home remedies for mouth ulcers, check out this site:
Happy swishing!
Jamie
5 Comments in this Topic
Alf said
5 months ago
Sounds like a good tip. Has anybody else tried this or soemthing similar?
When do we get you other 4 tips Jamie???? Suspense!
ShoeGirl said
5 months ago
Holding my breath!
Hey, has anyone else had a 'chemo buddy'? My friend Ez always took someone along to distract her.-
Jamie said
5 months ago
The next 4 tips will dribble out over the next few weeks (unlike the mouthwash I hope), so stay tuned!
A 'chemo buddy' sounds like a good idea. The cubicles in the chemo suite I'm familiar with are too far apart to chat to your neighbours, so you're stuck with your magazines unless you have a BYO buddy. 
stephano711 said
4 months ago
My mum didnt do chemo but she took me along for the couple of hours she was having blood transfusions :)-
Jamie said
4 months ago
Just had a chat this morning with a man waiting for chemo at the hospital I hang out in, and he said he'd used rock salt to help with mouth ulcers, and this had worked really well. (Dissolved in water, I think he meant, but you can also rub it directly into your gums if it doesn't hurt too much -- same with the bicarb.)
On the subject of which... I just spotted this blog post, which mentions my suggestion and a couple of others:
http://bit.ly/bPCImv
