I discovered I had a problem over two years ago. I suddenly heard "what smells like shit" constantly around me and after ignoring it initially, I decided to investigate thinking it couldn't be a coincidence. I discovered the back of my tongue smelled horrible. The smell would emanate from my mouth when speaking and my nose from breathing. The smell seemed to come out from my throat through my nose even when I swallowed. There was always a lump in my throat and I cleared my throat constantly/snorted to clear my throat/nose of thick mucous. The whole time I figured this was normal. Until it started crippling me socially when I realized I smelled. I fell into a deep depression. I had discovered this at the beginning of a relationship and it almost ruined what is the most wonderful relationship with the most wonderful man. We have been together through all of this. What really changed my life was breaking down and telling him one day why I was the way I was. He was responsive, supportive, and encouraging in finding the source and solution. And he is still by my side today. I recognize I am very lucky.
I heard comments about smells from fecal to burning dog shit to cat litter. All horrible things, it still hurts me to think about. Initially, I purchased mouthwashes, toothpastes, tounge scrapers. You know the drill. But as my relationship continued on happily I learned to live with my problem even though my daily routines to mask my problem were killing me.
For awhile, I would do this in the mornings or multiple times a day if I had to be around people in close contact:
Brush teeth with any toothpaste, didn't matter really.
Tongue scrape to the point of gagging and almost puking, sometimes actually puking
with a TUNG brush. I still stand by the TUNG brush being the most effective in cleaning your tongue. If anything, you need this. Gargle for as long as possible with whatever mouthwash fad I was on at the time anywhere from therabreath to the bleach dilution. Then, take my sinus rinse bottle and fill with saline and rinse my sinuses and make sure it came out of my mouth and into my throat when doing so. I'd also floss with my waterpik.
Doing all of this took a long time and caused me extreme discomfort not to mention if I ever were to go on a trip or stay somewhere outside of my home I was anxiety ridden about completing this routine in secrecy. All of that, and I still heard the comments, though not as often. After I'd eat anything, the odor would linger longer than I felt was normal. I'd notice people I'd eat the same things with not smelling at all, while I could smell the same food on my breath for hours, and then it would change into a terrible rotten smell like if the food I ate was sitting in the trash for a day. As you're all familiar with, I felt like my life was a waste. I would never, EVER be as successful or happy as I know I would be capable of without this god damn curse following me around, destroying my sense of self worth. I had found ways to make it manageable, that was it. I would lay in bed and cry for days.
I went to the ENT. I told her my problem, she was understanding. She investigated and told me she didn't see any signs of any serious issues with my sinuses. She must have saw my shoulders sink, because she said "Don't worry, I'm not ruling out the possibility of a low grade and chronic bacterial infection that I can't see." That alone gave me hope. She gave me a two week course of antibiotics (I know how everyone here feels about antibiotics. Please bear with me.)
I took most of the pills, and felt an improvement until I stopped taking them. Mucous in my throat, rotten taste in mouth, all of it was back. I wasn't surprised. Nothing surprises me anymore with this bullsh*t. She told me to call her and we would do a CT if they didn't work. I still haven't called her, though I will if what I'm doing now doesn't hold.
I logged back on about a week ago and remembered a conversation I had with some of you on here and one of you referenced a post on healthboards.com where a person had similar symptoms as me. He too was prescribed antibiotics for sinus reasons, but struggled still after them. He said out of desperation, he took a sinus rinse device and put in saline, johnson and johnson baby shampoo (to dissolve biofilm, as some of you may be aware of) and crushed half of one of the antibiotics he had leftover from his sinus doctor. He said "5 years of suffering were gone in two days" doing this in the morning and at night. Don't use too much baby shampoo, just two drops. It burns and can affect your sense of smell.
While this scared me to consider doing, I realized I had gargled bleach, and compared to that this certainly couldn't kill me. The next day I did exactly that, with my sinus rinse bottle. Saline, distilled water, two drops of baby shampoo, half of an amoxicillin tablet, shake it up (took about 30 minutes to dissolve completely and turned water yellowish and still had some bits floating.) I have done this a total of 4 times over 5 days. Not consistently at first, until I felt like something was changing. I did not get my hopes up, but here I am today, feeling normal for the first time in what feels like a lifetime. Less mucous in my throat. No extreme lingering food or drink smells, and I've had straight black coffee and a breakfast burrito, two things which would not leave a pleasant aroma on me before. I will not say my breath is perfect. My breath is just breath. We all forget that everyone's breath smells sometimes and no one has completely fresh breath all the time. I am being as realistic as possible, bordering on negative because I refuse to continue to get my hopes up, or any of yours, as we've all seen countless disappointments. But as I type this I keep checking my breath and can't say it smells the way it used to. It smells like normal breath. And the lump in my throat continues to diminish. There was also significantly less mucous on my tongue when I scraped. I woke up with very light morning breath today as well, which I was careful not to be excited about. My breath before would smell of coffee and burrito for hours until I scraped, after I've eaten/drank those things, plus a musty, nasty smell on top of it. I have been testing it by letting my mouth get dry, and not touching my breath with gum or mouthwash so that it is as honest of a review of what I've done as possible. Still, things seem to be...different and getting better.
Typing this post took a lot of thinking because I want to be clear: this is probably not something that will be worth trying if you feel you have a stomach problem or a dental problem or a hormone problem. I don't want you to try something else and be heartbroken yet again, like I've done so many times before. This is something that I believe could help someone with sinus related breath. If you feel food smells are trapped in your throat, and such things. I know getting antibiotics can be hard. I am not a doctor, so please do this at your own risk, although I do believe it is a low risk compared to the other things we've all tried. I am nervous to share this with all of you because I do not want to be the source of disappointment if it ends up not working on me in the long term, or doesn't help anyone at all. I will try to stay posted on this with you guys. But please be realistic, I may be back in a week or a month to say I'm right where I was before. I am very exhausted with all of this as I know you all are too. Thank you for being such a supportive group and resource for those of us suffering. It is invaluable what everyone is doing here when you are living your life this way. I am very grateful. I am especially grateful right now for the person who referenced the post on healthboards to me. Like I said I will try to update you all in a few days. Thank you for reading my long, wordy post
I hope this works and if so, I hope it helps more people than just me.
