My brother, Joe, started radiation on Monday, 11/12. He has 30 sessions scheduled for his Stage 3 tongue cancer.

I can see from the posts that loss/change of taste happens for a lot of people in radiation. When does this typically happen (i.e. week 3)?

Thanks for your help!

Jean

As with everything else this varies. For me at the end of week 2 stuff started to taste funny (metallic) and by week 3 it was pretty much done. (Except vanilla and chocolate and coffee, the first two I never lost)

... just make sure he still eats even though it might not taste right.. or at all. Otherwise this turns into one hell of a weight loss program.

Markus

In my case, the metallic taste began about week 3, and by week 5, everything tasted awful. Chocolate was one of the first things to go in my case, and has yet to come back completely.

I concur with Markus that you cannot let the taste impact his eating. I ate a lot of mashed potatoes with gravy and very finely ground meat. Soups worked well, as did scrambled eggs. I lost 30 pounds, which I should have lost anyway. I started treatment at 238, ended at 208. Could still lose a few . . . ;-)

This is not a diet plan. Your brother needs every calorie he can take in to keep his body strong enough to get through the treatment in good shape and to fight the cancer.

Good luck to you both.

Hi Jean

Mine was pretty much the same as Markus. By week 3 I was totally dependent on the PEG tube and my taste was gone. Never did have the metallic taste. Week 4 I was given a two week 'break' due to the extreme Mucouscitis I had. At the end of the break (which was Thanksgiving) I was able to taste salty stuff but once I started treatment again, all taste went away again quickly and I was back on the tube for another 8 weeks.

The nurses kept telling me calories, calories, calories and protein, protein, protein. I was bale to maintain my weight pretty well thru radiation, however after getting done , I dropped another 15 pounds with no change in caloric intake.

Kevin

...and Buzz states that he didn't lose his 'taste' at all during 38 IMRT & 6 chemo sessions; nor did he suffer from any mucous issues...so, you too may be one of the lucky ones! Good luck to you!

Lois & Buzz in NC

For me as well. Started losing taste around the second week, and by the third week, it was gone, and then everything tasted terrible. Oatmeal, peaches, and Ensure was my diet for weeks 3-5. By week 6, I was strictly on a Strawberry Ensure Plus and 4 scoops of icecream milkshake diet. I am now 12 days out of radiation and still on the Ensure, but hoping for some real food by Thanksgiving.

Good luck to both of you, and remain VERY strong for your brother. It will get difficult, and possibly very difficult to eat and swallow. But remember that it will get better a couple weeks after radiation is done.

Dan

For me as well. Started losing taste around the second week, and by the third week, it was gone, and then everything tasted terrible. Oatmeal, peaches, and Ensure was my diet for weeks 3-5. By week 6, I was strictly on a Strawberry Ensure Plus and 4 scoops of icecream milkshake diet. I am now 12 days out of radiation and still on the Ensure, but hoping for some real food by Thanksgiving.

Good luck to both of you, and remain VERY strong for your brother. It will get difficult, and possibly very difficult to eat and swallow. But remember that it will get better a couple weeks after radiation is done.

Dan

In my case I would say my "buds" began changing around week 3. The first notable loss was chocolate which I ate a lot of. I bit into a Hershey bar around week 3 and ran for the trash can as the taste was terrible. I simply could not believe it. Now, 16 months post Tx, I would say taste is somewhere between 90% to 95% back to normal and may be as good as will ever be. Chocolate still tastes terrible and I cannot tolerate the taste of beer or any other alcohol. Thank goodness I was never much of a drinker anyway. My taste for coffee was never really lost thank goodness as I would rather have coffee than any alcohol. Good luck and well wishes to your brother.

Bill D.

Well, it looks like week 2-3 is the turning point ... if it happens. Thanks for the replies.

Do foods still smell good? What about cravings?

Thanks,
Jean

Smell was not affected at all if anything it becomes more acute.
I did not have cravings from the middle of and and after the Tx. Later on however you do... and often get disappointed because it jut does not taste right (yet) or is to dry or crumbly.
.... it is a work in progress.....
M

When my son's sense of taste were gone, he could still smell and once when I asked him why he seemed to hover over his soup bowl so long, he said being able to smell and breathing in the vapors deeply was almost like tasting. As he began taking in more and more nutrition, he would spend several moments just breathing in the food smell sort of like virtual tasting until the real taste came back.

We have 5 senses--all related and closely linked in every experience--sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.
Probably why some who can't eat, enjoy cooking for others--sight and touch.
Nausea--sight and smell can be serious triggers.
Kneading dough for bread or pizza bases--touch, sound
A pan bubbling/simmering in the next room combined with smell--yummy or off-putting depending on circumstances.
From my reading here, it's not so much cravings as enjoying 'what feels okay/good' at the time, which might be totally out of the norm.
From my own point of view, didn't have radiation, so can't contribute on that-induced issues, but when I could hardly open my jaw and had a lot of pain in it, I discovered ice-cream gave me some nutrition (Had never bothered much about it before), ditto savoury rice, rice pudding, any drink with ice in, soggy cereal and cookies dunked in tea/coffee.

Brenda

Actually much of what we experience as taste is really smell. We're only have taste bud receptors for sweet-savory-sour-salty and bitter but we experience much more to taste than that and that's because of smelling the food in our mouth. I had serious swallowing problems and for a year after rad couldn't swallow much of anything--but I LOVED to smell stuff. My husband complained sometimes that I'd practically put my nose in his plate. If I was hungry it would make me more hungry though so I had to be either full of Jevity or about to have some.

I agree my sense of smell never went away. Everything tasteed bad in the 3rd week and by the 4th week I was getting most of my calories through the tube.

Nelie

I am not sure if I agree with you Nelie.
To me everything still smells ok. That has not changed. Take a good steak, It smells like it always did but if I eat it it tastes like crap.....


M

Hi Jean

My smell has gotten much more acute. When I was not able to eat during and after treatments, I would always go *sniff* the real supper before dumping the liquid down my tube.... man that was good

Just one of the games I played to keep my sanity

I hope that the Thanksgiving turkey smells or tastes good to him!

I have the taste and saliva problem too, but when I see the lady in charge of the Cancer reasearch that I am in,, she gets me to smell graham crackers. I don't know why but it does get the juices flowing. I have to give her saliva samples as well as scrappings from my mouth amd of course the good old urine thing.. LOL

Hey Jim !
do you think the reason could be something other than the cracker

M

Boys will be boys--lol!
Brenda