New bad breath, caught from girlfriend; sinus/bacterial infection?

Hello,

I was in a 3-month or so relationship with a girl who would sometimes have an odd-smelling, potent breath smell. She did not have faecal breath, but it was definitely not pleasant. Sometimes it was stronger than other times, so I assumed the smell was just her normal breath smell, caused by her unique mix of mouth bacteria. I had to find ways to politely say "It's late, let's go brush out teeth" etc, a few times.

After kissing her (deep kissing), I was unpleasantly surprised to find that my saliva now smelled the same way, but I figured this made sense, since we were just kissing minutes ago.

-

Long story short, we are no longer in a relationship (for other reasons) and:
- I brush my teeth well,
- I use a tongue scraper to scrape the white off my tongue
- I floss
- I gargle with mouthwash
- I even gargle with salt water (for a long time) because I am pretty sure it kills bacteria

and...

My saliva still smells like the unpleasant smell that I got from her. I often wake up congested with a runny nose (that always happened to me), but the mucus in my nose in the morning also smells the same way. I know that saliva never is "good-smelling", but it specifically smells like her smell, and that leads me to believe it's an abnormal infection, ESPECIALLY because my saliva/mucus did not smell this way one day before first kissing her.

I don't think I have any other symptoms aside from some fatigue which could be normal. I don't think it's a yeast infection, because I googled pictures of mouth yeast infections and they all have thick yellow stuff growing in their mouths... but... the smell is oddly close to the smell of yeast.

Is there anything I can do to get rid of this? I don't want to have her breath forever and I feel like if I were to explain this in person to a doctor in one of those little clinics, he would assume hypochondria and say something that doesn't help.

Thank you.

[Jerome Tsang, DDS]

My initial guess is that you have oral thrush or oral candiasis.  You may want to go to a physician or dentist to get it evaluated.  They may prescribe an anti-fungal medication to remove the fungus.  There may be a minor fungal infection.  A dental checkup and cleaning would help to.