My tongue has been burning and I’ve been having dry mouth for almost 4 months. Please help me.

Hello all,

Firstly I want to thank anyone who is willing to read this, and anyone who can give me advice on what it could be.

I’m a 23 year old male, I’ve never had any health issues before. I’m a smoker, but my checkups have always been fine, never any issues with my health, ever. The only thing I should mention is I lost close to 4 stone (roughly 25kg) in the summer of 2019, and gained it all back on since December/January this year due to depression and anxiety.

Back in March, I started to get these weird breathing issues where I couldn’t get air into my lungs. I would take a breath, and it would stop at my diaphragm, and I wasn’t getting the sensation of air reaching my lungs. I wasn’t really concerned about covid, and I wasn’t gasping for air. I didn’t feel unwell and I had no cough, just that weird breathing issue. This happened for about 2 weeks, then disappeared. It came back in April, and I started getting concerned, I went on worrying though, because along with this, I had awful stomach aches every morning. My stool was also loose and I didn’t have an appetite.

Mid May, my tooth started to feel a bit like there was pressure on it. This tooth (my upper back tooth) is basically rotting away, and I just needed time to go to the dentist. I stuck some temporary filler in there, and it was the worst mistake I ever did. 10 mins later, I had the WORST toothache I ever experienced in all my life. I was head down on my pillow, crying in pain and my head was throbbing. It was one of the worst pains I’ve ever experienced in my life. I took some pain relief and went to sleep.

2 days later, I woke up shaking at 6am. I had a fever of 38.5C. It was for sure from the toothache as my tooth and head were throbbing. The fever lasted probably 6 hours and then it was gone. I had the toothache for a number of days though, and so I scheduled a dentist appointment. 2 days after the toothache, I got a coating on my tongue. It was yellow/white, and my tongue felt mildly sore. I thought nothing of it as my tooth was more painful, and never mentioned it to the dentist, thinking nothing of it. The dentist said I need a root canal, and sent me on my way with antibiotics.

I was started on a 5 day supply of antibiotics, which took the pain away and I’m assuming whatever infection. I went to my doctor at the end of May to check my breathing/stomach issues and she said my white tongue was probably burned from using so much clove oil when I had the toothache (btw, it can’t be from the antibiotics as it was there before I even started them). It wasn’t thrush she said. She took bloods, they came back normal. From May, my tongue got progressively worse. It started gradually, a sour prickly sensation, a more sour than metallic taste and by mid June, it was full blown almost burning all over my tongue. Around this time, I started to get dry mouth too. My mouth felt so dry, but I would make myself gag just to check if I had saliva or if my salivary glands were working and I did, they obviously were working, the saliva was just really watery. The composition of my saliva changed.

I still had stomach issues all through June, July and August. But they’d come and go. My body started to itch too but no rash. I went back for an IG blood test and my doctor said I’m just an allergy type person and found nothing too serious, just elevated IG levels. The feeling in my stomach was sometimes cramps, sometimes a burning sensation. My doctor told me I was probably allergic to MSG since I eat a LOT of Chinese food (my partner is Chinese). My stool is also usually loose, but not diarrhoea. My appetite is also back for a while and I don’t have the breathing issue anymore (it stopped in May) but my mouth pain is just never ending.

I went to 5 doctors about this, it literally has taken over my life. All the doctors tell me is it’s because of my anxiety. I still have a burning tongue, dry mouth and a yellow coating at the back of my tongue which CANNOT be scraped off easily. It comes off if you scrub hard enough. I also have lots of tiny little bumps on my tongue, they’re TINY, but noticeable. Not like the big ones you get with TLP. It’s taken over my life. I saw another doctor this week who took a nice long look in my mouth (unlike any of the other doctors) and told me it was because of my stomach (after I told him my stomach issues). I’m now on a months supply of esomeprazole for GERD, which is working wonders on my stomach, no burning sensation there, but not my mouth, which is still burning. 3 weeks in and only little mouth improvements.

Has anyone else experienced this? Do you think it could be because or my stomach, and my mouth just needs time to readjust? I can’t rest. My mind races minute after minute. I just want to feel normal again. I’m sick of going to doctors.

Thank you so much for your time if you had read this. You don’t know how much I appreciate it.

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