Candida in agar culture. CDC Public Health Image Library #3192.
The nystatin didn’t do it, but it seems that perhaps the fluconazole did.
After downing ten days’ worth of bubblegum-flavored nystatin, I still couldn’t shake a lingering bitter taste in my mouth and some occasional burning in my throat. It was clearly time to call in the bigger guns, and they seem largely to have done the trick.
I’m about two weeks done with a course of fluconazole (citrus medley, I think) and delighted to once again be drinking tea, enjoying fruit, and laying off the Tums. Haven’t dared to try cranberry juice yet, but I think even that may turn out to be o.k.
O.K., of course, is a relative term. The whole episode, common as it may be, has rattled me a bit and prompted me to think more seriously about trying out an elimination diet. Taking med after med after med isn’t really what I want to be doing to myself. It was also unnerving to hear my wonder pharmacist say that most of the candida she encounters is now nystatin-resistant.
So, unless life gets radically complicated–and there’s a very good possibility that it might–I’m eying this summer as a time to go cold-turkey for a while on all the foods I love. In the meantime, I’ve reintroduced probiotics into my daily routine. I had been taking them religiously when I began the budesonide, then slacked off, so I wonder if that was a contributing factor.
And that discovery? Turns out I can eat a few spoonfuls of plain yogurt (the really intense kind–just milk and cultures) without feeling bad! No idea if it’s whacking out my eosinophils, but it’s tart, it’s creamy, it’s full of probiotics, and I just can. So there.
EosinophilGirl 