The point where your husband is in his recovery is one of the most difficult for both patients and their caregivers. Often patients feel they are not making significant progress in getting better. Caregivers can get frustrated when they continually encourage eating but nothing ever is ok for their patient. Most patients think they should be better by now but a complete recovery takes a very long time, about 2 years. The end of recovery improvements are not as noticeable to patients around their 2 year mark with only minor improvements in taste and saliva. From my years here, many patients recovering from rads first begin to get some of their sense of taste back around 6-8 weeks post rads. For weeks, possibly months foods will not taste how they should which is very discouraging to patients. For me, everything tasted like burnt, over-salted, dry charcoal. It was absolutely horrible!!! Even water (all kinds... tap water or bottled water) tasted salty and burnt. Food that no salt was added to still tasted like someone put a whole salt shaker of salt on it. Eventually my wacky sense of taste returned to almost what it was before I had cancer and rads.

I dont remember if I ever gave you our list of easy to eat foods. Please let me know if you need it. One of the first foods I was surprised I could actually taste again was canned peaches. Make sure you do not buy cling peaches as they will be difficult to swallow. The canned peaches went down easily, when I would try eating them with a little of the syrup they would slide right down. When trying foods, rotate them every few days or weeks. What tastes bad today could be ok in a couple days or maybe not for a few weeks. But when you find something that your husband likes, its still not in the clear. Unfortunately he may only be ok with that food for a day or two before he isnt able to tolerate it anymore. Then a few weeks down the road that food is back to being ok again. Your husband may only be ok to sample something for the first bite or 2 and then it loses all flavor when he continues to eat it. It makes no sense at all how the sense of taste comes and goes during the recovery phase.

Hang in there, the worst is behind you both.