Radiotherapy - sense of taste

Hi Jelly and a warm welcome to this corner of the Community and to hear about your partner.

I am Mike and I help out around our various Lymphoma groups. 

I left your post for a period of time to see if any members picked up it…… and there is still time for this to happen.

I don’t have DLBCL but I was diagnosed way back in 1999 at 44…… with my rare (8 in a million) incurable but treatable type of Skin (Cutaneous) T-Cell Lymphoma (a type of slow growing Low-grade non-Hodgkin lymphoma)…….

I eventually reached Stage 4a in late 2013 when a second, also rare (4 in a million) type of aggressive Peripheral T-cell lymphoma not otherwise specified (PTCL-NOS) (a type of fast growing High-grade non-Hodgkin lymphoma) was then presenting so although my Lymphoma ‘type’ is different I most definitely appreciate the challenges of this journey rather well.

I had my intensive treatment between late 2013 to late 2015 (800+ hrs of chemo, 45 radiotherapy zaps and 2 Allograft (donor) Stem Cell Transplants)…….  but I turned 70 a few weeks back and I am coming up to 10 years since my last treatment and doing great.

It was the chemo and my second Allo SCT that did my taste buds in………. My great CNS kept reminding me and my wife that we had to concentrate on getting fuel into my body……. and this was food regardless if it had no taste……. and this happened over Christmas 2013 then 2015.

In fac  I was not eating a lot over Christmas 2015 into the first 4 months of 2016 so my taste buds were not a high priority.

The one thing that did help was liquidised fresh pineapple that was then frozen in Ice-cube trays….. I would suck on a few of these before any food but also throughout the day as it did take the dryness away.

Thanks so much for replying Thehighlander  and I am liquidising pineapples as I type! Tart flavours do seem to be cutting through a bit. If anyone else is reading this and in a similar position, then blue cheese and virgin mojitos have also helped slightly.