Brief Answer: Courage as you battle with this lymphoma. Detailed Answer: Hi and thank you so much for this query. I am so sorry to hear about this lymphoma and the current thrush you are battling with. I am however happy that you were able to go through chemotherapy and radiotherapy successfully and now in a state of remission. I hope it never relapses again. Cancer, chemotherpay and radiotherapy individually affect the immune system and, a combination of the three further worsens the immune status. This is the reason why you have developed an opportunistic infection in the form of mouth and gut thrush. This would need aggressive and sustained treatment to make sure that it gets cleared off. Gut thrush needs fluconazole for at least 2weeks. I hope your doctors have been able to do just this. If you should fail to respond to treatment appropriately, then it would be great if you could be investigated for other possible causes of pains in the throat like CMV, herpes, etc infections which are also common in persons with a weakened immune system. This would require an upper GI endoscopy and analysis of specimen/samples obtained from the throat. I hope the culture results return an give a definitive diagnosis as to whether it is for sure thrush only of thrush associated with another disease process. In all, your immune system is still very much of a concern. I hope the swab results would shed more light on the exact cause and help guide treatment. I wish you well as you continue this fight. I understand how demanding this can be but your motivation and determination should never diminish. Feel free to ask for more information and clarification if need be. Thanks for using our services. Dr. Ditah, MD.

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