My father has throat cancer. They have just started radiation. He has 32 treatments and is only on number 9. He has asked me to research and see if I can find any postings on eating. He is just wanting to taste something, anything. I did a search and had grim results. I cant find anyone that can taste anything. It seems after reading that, the worst is yet to come, but I cannot bare to give him that news. He still has saliva, just no taste. He has a feeding tube and took his first meal in it yesterday. This is a man that thinks about food 24-7. Now he is in a nightmare he cannot wake from. Is there anything he can take to taste anything. Is there anything after radiation you can still taste? Right now he is a Tang junkee, because that is all he can taste. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
amy

How about vanilla, chocolate and coffee?
(milk shakes etc vanilla ice cream)
For me these were the tastes that persisted the longest.
The loss of taste is not pleasant that is true; consider however that there may be a point where it actually hurts when you have even liquid food in your mouth and eating and even drinking is near impossible! At that point the fact that things do not taste does not seem important any longer.

Taste or no tase he needs sufficent nutrition and hydration.

Best

Markus

Thanks for the quick reply. He cant taste icecream anymore, but Mom said he did make a pot of coffee this afternoon. I read her your post. The reality of all this is having a hard time penetrating in any of my family members. This website has been very insightful and helpful. Thanks Again
amy

Amy,

In case you still check this post - my husband lost taste during treatment and just like Markus said then couldn't even drink or eat by mouth it was so painful.

Jim is now 5 weeks post treatment. Within the first 2 weeks after treatment he had some taste - mostly at the tip of his tongue. As time goes on it is coming back! Hang in there! Things will look worse before they get better but it is nothing short of miraculous that they usually do!

The body is truly amazing. After treatment ended I kept a diary and took pictures each week. Within 3 weeks I had a l lot of proof positive to show my husband just how far he had come!

Be supportive and hang on...you'll all make it!

Hi Amy, this is a pretty common problem and truthfully it's trial and error because every patient has a different taste that works for them at the point your Dad is at. For Jack it was cream cheese so we added that to scrambled eggs. Everything else pretty much tasted like cardboard to him but that was a temporary situation. If tang works for your Dad he should go with it.

After radiation stops taste starts to come back. Jack got salty taste back first but sweets took a long time for him. He still has issues with mixed tastes in desserts, and some things are not quite as strong as before. But he feels it's a small price to pay for his life.

Like your Dad, he loves food - he spent most of his recovery watching the food network, which at the time seemed a little nuts to me. However, it gave him hope, something that he could look forward to enjoying again. He visulized that one day he would be eating whatever they were showing on TV - and now he is. Tell your Dad to think about the time that treatment will end and when he will start to get to his new life as a cancer survivor. It will get better.

I think you should tell your Dad what you've found in your research because he's going to find out for himself soon enough and being prepared is better. Also you can let him know that this too shall pass and that you've been in contact with people who have been there and gotten better. That was really helpful for Jack.

It's really important to keep up his calories so the feeding tube will facilitate that. But he also needs to keep swallowing - even a little bit - when using the tube because it will help his recovery afterwards.

Regards JoAnne

Hi Amy - Don't know if this will help, but one thing my son discovered when he couldn't taste anything is that he could get a familiar "feeling" about food by smelling it, inhaling deeply thru his nose and drawing the smell as close as possible to the back of his throat. He would say that it was "almost" like tasting it. The loss and then regaining of tastes seem to have wide variations among different people. For a time, he said everything tasted too salty and I couldn't use salt in anything I cooked. I never knew from one day to the next which taste he would like or not like. When his taste for sweets came back, I got him some gourmet jellybeans in all the flavors so he could test his taste buds, and he and his 6 yr old daughter and I had a jellybean celebration. When the taste for chocolate came back, I got him some of those gold wrapped chocolate coins. Now, at 7 months from the end of treatment, he says he can taste most everything but not to the same intensity as before. Recently there were some interesting articles on "super tasters" and the differences in ability to taste certain foods. One research suggests that 35% of women are super tasters compared to only 15% of men. If you "google" <super tasters>, you'll see several links for it. The tastes do come back and each time a new one appears, it's a "woo-hoo" moment! :p

Hi Amy,

Everyone is different, but for my husband, when he was where your dad was at...he could enjoy eggs, noodles with alfredo sauce, homemade mac and cheese and chicken soup.

Also, he has been able to enjoy the Peach Mango flavored Fuze drink throughout treatment.

Good luck,

Hi Amy!

I hope you return to read the above responses, and also this one. The loss of taste has been on of the biggest challenges for me, coupled with the inability to just plain eat, anything.

I just finished my second battle in the trip through this ugly war. The first began back in June of 2005.

There are a few things that I have never lost the taste of, Welches Grape juice, Chocolate Ensure and cantelope of all things. On very infrequent occasions, while cooking for the family, I do taste some of the seasonings I am using while testing the food, though near 99% is served with no idea what it will taste like. Fortunately for them, I was brought up in the restaurant business and most of my cooking is done to smell and touch so there are few complaints.

The big thing is going to be to get him to try different things, most will taste like cardboard, but somewhere alone the way a taste will emerge when least expected. Hopefully he will never reach the point I am at now in dealing with the mental aspect of never being able to chew and eat food again. Being a chef I LOVE food and accepting the fact that I will never eat a grilled steak or peanut butter sandwich again has me devestated.

I would suggest starting with any kind of fruit as they can be eaten in small pieces or run through a blender to make juice.

I wish you and your dad well in the weeks to come in his fight with this insidious disease.

I am 1 1/2 yrs. out of treatment. I have most of my taste back - not all things, but I believe in time it will come for you too - this is a slow healing process & patience is the answer, but it does get better! I posted a recipe for a drink on a subject about taste & it is great!
Jean

I pushed and pushed to have my RO give me some idea in the beginning about time of taste bud loss. He never really wanted to respond to that question and I can now see why in my case of just over 1 year post Tx. Taste is still probably the biggest issue for me at this point as few things taste as they did before and some things are just not tolerable. I still pick up too much of a sweet taste in such things as yellow corn, most types of nuts, any type of bread or bread product. No type of dessert tastes right and chocolate is probably the worst. It seems that taste issues vary more for survivors than for any other feature from my monitoring this forum. I have come to the conclusion that it really seems to do no good for any one survivor to relate their individual taste recovery or lack thereof experiences. The taste issues just seem to be so subjective in nature.

Bill D.