Painkiller For Tongue Cancer

[merv]

Does anyone know of a medicine that will definitely stop the pain in my tongue. Hospital and Clinic doctors all give me a lot of crap. One clinic doctor gave me pills & capsules to take one of each every 6 hours, they just made pain worse. Morphine is useless. The only relief is to put paracetamol under my tongue and let dissolve, 10-15 minutes and the pain has gone but only good for about 3 hours, no good if trying to sleep.

Any suggestions??

[Sheryl]

Dear Merv,

Have you tried taking the morphine sublingually (under the tongue)? In fact whatever oral meds you try, I would take that way. As long as it is not a sustained release preparation, sublingual absorption should be good. It's almost as good as IV anmd has the added benefit of delivering a high dose f=directly to the mouth area first

Secondly you should try topical lidocaine, which will directly numb the tongue and adjacent structures. It comes as:

Xylocaine Topical viscous oromucosal liqd 2 %

and

Xylocaine Topical topical spray 10 %

Both are made by Astra Zeneca and dfistributed by DKSH. The first form is a gel you swish around in your mouth, the second is a spray. Experiment to see which does better. It is short acting so need to repeat at intervals but should definintely get some relief. (eating & drinking will be a little hard as your tongue will be numb so time that for between doses).

You may need to get it from a hospital, or else a very large major pharmacy. It is legal to sell without prescription but only in pharmacies with grade one pharmacists on duty at all times and there are record keeping requirements which many pharmacies do not like to bother with.

Another mouthwash that may help is called Difflam (benzadymine), it is not an anesthetic but has antiinflamatory properties.

Lastly I suggest you get under the care of a pain specialist if you are not already. There may be things like selective nerve blocks or targeted acupuncture etc that would also help you depending on exactly what nerve pathways are causing the pain. . If you tell me where you are located I may be able to suggest one.