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Hey guys, so this is going to be a long story but I thought it might help some of you that have just discovered they have burning mouth syndrome. I just went 4 weeks with it, but it took 3 weeks to get it diagnosed. That's a whole other story that I won't even go into.
Anyway, I'll give you a background about what lead to this. So about 5 months ago I gave up red meat, then about 3 months ago I decided that wasn't so bad so maybe I will try vegan before 6 (aka VB6), then I decided to cut out meat all together, except for large get togethers or on the occasional weekend when I wanted to live it up. So when you go vegan I gave up eggs, dairy, and meat. I loved being vegan, felt great, was taking my b12 supplements, thought everything was fine. That was the case until I burned my tongue one evening eating what I thought was "warm" apple pie. Well I only burned it a little bit, like if you drank something that was too hot. Didn't think anything of it until the next afternoon around 3 pm when the tastebuds on my tongue started swelling up all around my tongue.
So the next couple weeks I went to some crappy doctors that were available at a health clinic and they couldn't figure it out, but gave me some serious pain meds (woohoo! ). They referred me to an oral surgeon who laughed me out of the office because apparently an oral surgeon wouldn't know what to do with this. Then I ended up calling my primary care physician - should have done this in the first place, but unfortunately by the time the pain was initially excruciating it was a Sunday. So he said I had thrush and that the BMS was secondary. He gave me a prescription for Mycelex and sent me on my way but said to call back in a few days if there were still issues.
Well I followed everything to a "T" and my tongue was still going crazy. I started adding things back into my diet - eggs, then yogurt, then white meats. Nothing. In the meantime I had gone in for some blood work, but they only tested me for a b12 deficiency (aka pernicious anemia) and HIV (which they forgot to do at the clinic but luckily I am happily married and was not too concerned about that test). So I vaguely remember mentioning to my doctor during our conversation that I had a slight history of anemia, nothing major just that I wasn't able to donate blood a couple times in my life.
Then a couple days ago I was having a conversation with my husband about how it's like my body is making me eat everything that I had cut out of my diet while I was vegan. Then I remembered that I hadn't eaten any red meat yet. So the next evening we made steak fajitas. The swelling started to go down within an hour, just a little bit, but enough that I could tell there was a difference. So then we went out and got some iron pills and I took one as soon as we got home. The next morning the swelling had gone down a bit more. So then I took another iron pill, had eggs for breakfast, chicken salad for lunch, and a cheeseburger for dinner, needless to say I am almost back to 100% feeling normal.
Now I haven't added any citric acid back in yet, I think I will give it another week just so I don't irritate anything, but I at least wanted to get this posted in case it helps someone rule it out. When I read the boards and heard there is no known cure if it is primary I got completely depressed, the thought of never being able to enjoy a glass of wine again or dinner out with my husband weighed heavily on me. I spent hours trying to figure it out and I hope that by posting this it might just help somebody else. Good luck everyone!!!
