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possible cancer?

Hi,

I'm a 39 y/o male, never smoked, normal alcohol consumer, and about 2,5 years ago, I moved to a new place and I started to get postnasal drainage and also issues with my voice. After speaking more loudly or speaking for a while, I would start to loose my voice. No fever, no swallowing issues. Something that rarely (if ever happened to be before). Since my new place is fairly close to the freeway, I suspected allergies.
After 2 years of constant nasal drainage and loosing my voice every so often, I decided to get tested for allergies. The results showed that other than palm oil, I'm not allergic anything...

A couple of weeks ago, I suddenly experienced much more drainage than usual, especially at night, and completely lost my voice. I thought it maybe could be a could I picked up, but In the morning my throat was filled with nasal drainage and after couching it all up, I saw a little bit of blood. I went to a urgent are and they prescribed me with methylprednisolone. I got back my voice after 2 days, and most of the drainage is gone (not all), however, I noticed that I also lost weight (from 148 to 141). That scared me. I have an appointment with an ENT in a few weeks, but have a few questions:

1: Could this be throat cancer?
2: Does loss of voice come and go over periods of time in throat cancer, or would a hoarse voice be bad all the time?
3: Would methylprednisolone be able to improve loss of voice due to throat cancer?
4: Is post nasal drainage a sign of throat cancer?
5: Does the weight loss, that happened over a 2 week period look concerning?

Thank you for your insight!
1 Responses
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15695260 tn?1549593113
Hello and welcome to the forum.  Thanks for your question but am sorry you have this situation.  I'm very glad you are seeing the ENT and hopefully you can start getting to the bottom of this ongoing issue.  Here is some information on throat cancer in the mean time. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/throat-cancer/symptoms-causes/syc-20366462 Post nasal drip is not on the list of symptoms but some of the other things you are experiencing are.  However, they could be and probably are completely unrelated. The chances of this being throat cancer are low.  Are you having pain?
Helpful - 1
2 Comments
Thanks for your reply.
No pain, no. No issues swallowing either.
That's a good sign that you have neither of those. Post nasal drip is just occasionally associated with throat cancer and not listed on the Mayo Clinic list of symptoms.    Please do let us know what happens at your appointment.  

By the way, there are causes of non allergic type of rhinitis that you may want to look into.  Is the area you moved to more congested?  Air pollution and exhaust can cause chronic post nasal drip and even weather changes are linked to it. https://www.medicinenet.com/chronic_rhinitis/article.htm#is_rhinitis_always_related_to_allergies
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