Here's a ringing endorsement of Cheryld's comments on the return of taste.

I've had a smorgasbord of Chemo agents, and the one thing I found that all had in common was that they mess with your taste. Beyond that, the taste-function that is working often mangles the flavors it does detect, and overall, the return to normal can be VERY slow.

I completely lost my sense of taste back in '09 when I was getting Cisplatin. It had only returned to about 50% by the time my first recurrence showed up and was treated with a cocktail of Carboplatin and Taxol (later changed to Taxetere to preserve my diminishing hearing - all chemos I've experienced also take chunks out of your hearing also. I found that many of the flavors that I'd recovered were now gone again.

I don't mean for this to scare you, just the opposite. I haven't had any chemo for about a year now, only forms of radiation, and I'm probably back to nearly 90% in the taste area. However, some flavors, steak especially, (still) fade away before I reach the end of the portion I'm eating.

The good news on that is that even those flavors are fading later in the process so I expect full return in time.

But some flavors seem to have returned markedly changed; and others (like high fructose corn syrup) have become strong enough to over-ride whatever artificial flavoring agent they use (e.g. pancake syrup's fake maple flavoring) and, while I never detected the HFCS previously, I find I cannot stand it today and that ruins anything sweetened with it. Overall, that's a big PLUS for me!

I used to live fresh, hot french fries. They have lost their appeal entirely. Win!

As Cheryld said, fresh veggies were among the first flavors to fully return to detectability, they have remained unmodified and do not fade. Fresh fruits the same.

So in the final analysis, taste return at its own pace and not always completely; but the upside is that it seems to favor healthy real food over junk.

Overall, not a bad deal in my book. Your experience will vary in the details and fine print, but I think if you can keep your sense of perspective, you'll find this more a minor annoyance at worst, and even a beneficial one at best.

Good Luck,

Bart