Foul Taste After Treatment

Hi John. I’m afraid this is pretty common. It’s not due to saliva but to confused messages going to your brain from your battered taste glands. It takes a long time for these glands and their nerve supply to heal/ normalise.
My taste changed up and down for a good few months and coupled with lack of appetite I didn’t enjoy my food for a year. 

I found sweet things easier to cope with. 
Hang on. Recovery is sometimes two steps forward and one back. Sometimes food that was ok for a time suddenly becomes awful. So you just step back from it and try again a few weeks later. 

Hi Dani,

Many thanks for your reply but - ouch! - a year! I must admit that this taste issue has really annoyed me as I was ok in weeks 5 & 6 and then this hits in 7. However, as its par for the course then that makes it a bit easier to deal with.

Thanks again.

John

John Bn said:

Many thanks for your reply but - ouch! - a year! I

That’s not to say I didn’t have taste before then it’s just that things waxed and waned and spices were difficult. By a year  I could eat all my favourite foods including curries. We are all different. My oncologist is fond of relating the story of one of his patients coming off six weeks of proton and tucking into a burger straight away. 

Hi John

Theres days when my mouth tastes of metallic spoons or like it’s full of salt.

My oncologist says it will just take time . I didn’t have radiotherapy or chemotherapy , but the nerves took a battering from the operation. I’m two years on, but it is getting better, you will get there 

Hi John. Re water I found bottled water  fir at least the first year palatable. Then tap  water boiled then put in fridge better than ours tap  water fir at least another year. Metallic taste came and went often like Dani says one week a dish was palatable to try ti week after no way. It’s really early days fir you things do improve I often say it’s a marathon not a sprint. 
Hazel x

Hi John 

I found for a while all I could drink was fizzy water as normal tap or still tasted vile ! Coffee was same and still would at times taste rotten.

Hi, sorry to hear you are experiencing this but it has helped me... I am now into my 5th week post treatment and just started noticing an odd (not awful but not good either) taste in my mouth. Reading some of the replies, I can see that we're maybe in for a 'two steps forward, one step back' cycle for some time... it's, at least, re-assuring, that this is the norm and no cause for worry or alarm.

Hi John

I had this too. I described it as 'hot salt' in my mouth. One day I could have half a tin of soup for the other half to taste of soap the next day! I preferred stronger (but not spicy) flavours eg broccoli and Stilton soup and adding garlic butter to mashed veg. I tried to think positively that something was happening and changing week to week. I was a coffee addict previously and described my favourite coffee as chillies in an ashtray.  It has got A LOT better and I've learned to adapt. Hang in there! X