Hi Jen,
On one of your posts, uou asked about foods you might be able to try. I started with apple juice, apple sauce, flat Frasca or Ginger Ale, coffee, black, beer, scrambled eggs, poached eggs, yogurt, pasta with cream sauce, soups, mostly cream, romaine lettuce with Kraft blue cheeese dressing, cream of wheat with lots of honey, butter and hot milk, rare steak cut in tiny pieces, lamb chops with mint jelly, mixed vegetables, corn, etc. You need to pcik foods that have a lot of natural moisture and serve meats with a sauce. One day something would taste good and the next day like crap. You have to keep experimenting but the sooner you can start taking food orally, the better you should feel. It is not like you have to eat everything orally like I did. My tongue was very burnt so I had to have no spices. Unfortunately I did not keep a journal so all this is from memory from 8 years ago. I did go back to work 3 weeks after rad and had to eat in company cafeteria so I was on soup and sald by then.

They had me on a high protein diet of 80gms a day, so it took lots of milk and Ensure Plus to maintain that with the amount of food I could eat. Check with the dietician on that and what you can eat. Mine also put me on zinc, Vit C & E. Remember I only had a neck dissection, rad but no chemo so my experience may be different.

Hope you are feeling better soon and trust me I know how frustrating it cna be to not be able to talk. I still have my steno pad with my RAGE notes on it.

Take care,
Eileen