Another rock near another hard place

I have a new dimension to my continuously-expanding structure of CF care: yeast infection.

For the last five days, I've had very sore, cracked upper lip and roof of my mouth. At first I thought it was inflammation in reaction to one of my antibiotics, and that's what my doctor was afraid of, too. My upper lip felt and acted very much like a rapidly chapped lip - but this problem is localized, it's not over my whole mouth. So WTF?

After seeing a dermatologist yesterday, I now know that I'm dealing with a yeast infection. Now, yeast infections are nothing new. Anyone with athlete's foot, jock itch, or another feminine problem knows all about this. In fact, I've come to accept that one of the side effects of going on antibiotics is that I end up my mild jock-itch, easily taken care of with routine applications of Lotrimin. After the initial burning, it yields to a gentle warmth in the crotchal region and really keeps the itching at bay. Paired with a lighter, it also doubles as a handy method of killing zombies. A couple weeks after antibiotics, the jock itch will go away completely.

But I digress. Thrush is also a known problem when people go on antibiotics, so it surprises me that I didn't make the connection between my lip and mouth problems and yeast.

I've got some medicine now which, if nothing else, seems to numb the affected areas for awhile, but it will probably take a while to really work. In the meantime, eating is fairly painful and I've started choosing soft foods or letting things like cereal really sit in milk before eating. Even still, my mouth ends up quite sore. I never would have thought that my CF would affect what I can physically shove down my gullet.