Hi I am a 52 man, & I was diagnosed with neck Cancer in April 2015 after an operation to remove my left tonsil it was found that the cancer in my tonsil had also spread to two Lymph Nodes in my neck. My treatment started at the beginning of June & lasted six weeks which consisted of 30 Radiation treatments & 6 Chemo treatments using Cisplatin, I opted not to have the feeding tube as I thought that after having the tonsil removed I could stand the discomfort of the Radiation & Chemo procedure. the first three weeks of treatment were not too bad & I was still able go to work, the beginning of week four things dramatically changed, until this point all I had suffered so far was loss of taste. I now started to feel fatigued all the time, swallowing water and solid food was getting more painful. so I now started using high calorie powder drinks & shakes as given to me by the hospital, these all tasted foul (almost vomit like in taste) despite the five different flavours offered, it would take me three or four hours to be able to drink one half pint measure of which I had to to do at least four a day to achieve a 1800 calorie intake. This did not happen because of the extremely foul taste that the treatment was causing, I was only managing one to two a day, along with some water. From the last week of treatment to the following two weeks of post treatment I lost 40lbs going from 12st 7lb (when treatment started) to 9st 8lb. It is now 7 months since the treatment ended (I am now 11st) and I cannot taste much at all. There are peaks and trough days, one day I can taste something and the next day I can try exactly the same thing and nothing at all, it’s so fruststrating, also alot of foods burn my throat like tomotoe sauce and give me head sweats (does anybody suffer head sweats when eating some foods?) but I’m getting used to it as a way of life now. I was told by the hospital that it would take at least a couple of years from the end of treatment before things would be as good as they were ever going to get, so hopefully over the next 18 months things will improve. At least I am in the clear right now and I am grateful for that, and it's good to be alive & well, but it would be also great to be able to eat bread and chew meat again and enjoy the taste. (I so miss a burger or a fish finger sandwich!) I will never take taste for granted again if it ever comes back, even 50% of what I had before treatment would be fantastic. Anyway moaning over now, good luck to you all & best wishes.
