Glad to hear that your ability to taste food and speak has returned. I had a similar recovery timeline with a similar surgery. Although I didn't have that whole terrible reoccurrence thing to deal with (knock on wood) and I had my rads after my surgery, so I lost my sense of taste twice and it recovered both times.

For me, almost four years later speech can still sometimes be a hurdle. I still have difficulty making certain sounds, so I will occasionally have to come up with a different word to describe what I was trying to say when someone does not understand what I had said. Or sometimes resort to spelling something out in phonetic code because people think I said G when I was trying to say D (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, haha). But no other real complaints so far.