I'm confused about how long taste buds will take to function again. My dietitian said a month but everyone here and all over the internet says months or years or not at all. If your taste buds took a year to return, does that mean you drank Ensure for a year or forced down a variety of food when it tasted like mud or metal? I've started to feel sick of chocolate milkshakes and I'm beginning to lose some weight so I tried fruit and good quality vanilla ice cream with my Fortisip. It tasted like mould and had to be poured down the sink. Irony is that I'm really hungry.

There don't see to be many people like me who had 30 rads with no chemo and to only one side of the face and neck. Is there anybody out there who experienced that and who had taste buds return earlier? Because of a public holiday, I won't see the RO until 9 June. She should be able to give me an answer tailored to my treatment but right now I'm feeling quite depressed about my intake. I know there are people on permanent feeding tubes but right now I feel sorry for myself because I haven't been able to eat since 18 February - apart from soups and soft food - and now I'm looking at a long, long time of Fortisip. Don't think I can continue the chocolate ice cream and chocolate syrup which made it half way palatable because I just don't think they are good for me.

I know what the answer is, I have to man up and experiment but I just felt like a whinge.