Salivary Gland Issue?

Salivary gland issues are common after RT, our mouths are a bit of a mess, ask your RT team for advice on the issue, I'm pretty sure they will have had a lot of asks concerning the issue.

I'm 12 weeks post RT treatment and have been experiencing a similar problem for about 14 weeks. Every time I attempt to eat, the roof and sides of my mouth break out in small painful blisters that eventually dissipate after I stop eating.  These were eventually diagnosed as superficial mucoceles caused by damage to the minor salivary glands.  My head and neck cancer team believe this is an unusual side effect of radiotherapy treatment which should right itself with time.  Meanwhile I've tried using an oral steroid mouth wash, which didn't help, and have now been prescribed pilocarpine to see if stimulating saliva production makes a difference. 

Not sure if this helps at all, I've been meaning to write a post about this in case it's useful for others, so I'll try and get round to doing that sooner rather than later. 

Thanks Bella, my Radiation Oncologist feels it’s a gland issue as well and should go away in time. I tried pink lady and it didn’t help. Thankfully it doesn’t last long. 

Hi I had water blisters about three weeks after finishing RT. They seemed to appear near times I was about to eat and burst a while after. They were so painful and at times caused me to not being able to eat. It's as if they knew my feeding times. I used the usual pain relief that was suggested with ulcers during RT. I took them July last year and they disappeared end of November thankfully. The oncologist and consultant said it was a rare side effect that only two other patients had taken . Haven't had them since and the salivary gland was also mentioned. Xx

That's good to know that this does disappear eventually, it's really debilitating. None of my cancer team (ENT surgeon, oncologist, head & neck nurses) had ever seen this side effect before, so it's definitely pretty rare. It was an oral medicine consultant who eventually diagnosed the condition in my case.