Food for Thought

I was warned that one of the side effects of the Tonsillectomy and the tongue biopsies was that my taste buds would be adversely effected. Reading up on this on various medical web sites and forums, a lot of reference is made to food having a strange metallic taste to it.

I can’t claim to have ever had what could be described as a sophisticated palate.  For me the most exotic dish I could claim to have eaten in my early adult years was a deep fried pineapple ring accompanied with chips expertly fried and served by the staff at Powney Road fish and chip shop as I stumbled home from the regular Friday night pub crawl into Maidenhead. 

I say expertly fried when actually given the condition that I and my companions were more often than not in, the fare could have been fried in battery acid and we wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.  So given this lack of sophistication when it comes to dining, the potential change to my taste senses was not something that concerned me greatly in the lead up to going under the knife.

Powney Road Chippy - still going strong!

 

In the first week or so after the op, I was having so much trouble simply swallowing, that what the food tasted like seemed immaterial.  But here we are rapidly approaching 5 weeks later and getting the food down is pretty much back to normal but unfortunately the taste sensations are certainly not. 

For me personally, I would not so much describe it as a metallic taste but more a bitter taste. This bitterness varies depending on the food I’m eating.  With savoury/spicy food the bitterness, whilst still there, is masked and doesn’t detract too greatly from the eating experience but when it comes to anything sweet, the bitterness is so pronounced that it has put me off sweet things pretty much altogether.  Now given that I have (or may that should be had) a really sweet tooth and ate far too much sugar, this might not be a bad thing, but the problem is that the craving for something sweet at the end of a meal has not yet gone away, nor the desire for a Saturday night treat of tea with lashings of Revels, Minstrels, Maltesers or in fact anything coated in milk chocolate (dark chocolate is the work of the devil).

My research tells me that my taste buds may return to normal after a while and that I shouldn’t give up on a particular food but try it again after a week or so.  I have therefore implemented a sugar taste test every 4 or 5 days.  The produce I have selected to measure signs of taste improvements are “fun size” Mars bars. I have never worked out why they called them fun size as eating a full size Mars bar is way more fun than eating the mini ones and whoever thought up the marketing campaign around them being “two bites big” was clearly way of the mark. As far as I am concerned “one and done” would have been a far more appropriate strap line.

The anticipation as I unwrap the treat and pray that this is the occasion when I will once again enjoy the taste of sugar is palpable.  The immediate taste gives me a split second of hope and then as I swallow, the bitter aftertaste kicks in and hangs around my mouth like a lady of the night hangs around a dimly lit street corner.  Never mind perhaps next time.

Another side effect of the eating difficulties I have experienced is that I lost weight in the immediate aftermath of the operation - almost half a stone.  Now anyone who knows me will know that I don’t exactly carry much excess baggage and I seriously need to keep my weight up ready for the treatment which starts next week.

Due to the cancer being in my neck and throat, the radiation treatment will take me back to a dark place where eating food will again become a challenge along with further adverse effects on how food tastes.   I am told that the salivary glands on the right hand side of my mouth will permanently cease to function adding even more joy to my delightful dining experiences.    

Unlike with the tonsillectomy where I was back to eating normally (despite impaired taste) after 4 weeks, as the treatment is over 6 weeks and recovery over several weeks post treatment there is the risk that I lose even more weight.  So with the aim of bulking me back up to my fighting weight of 11 stone, my carer (AKA Emma) has taken on the role of chief nutritionist and this involves her nagging me what feels like 24 hours a day to ensure that not only have I eaten my normal 3 meals a day but that I have taken a mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack.

In the early post operation days, swallowing was so painful that I really didn’t look forward to meal times at all and it would take me an absolute age to finish any meal.  The situation got to the point where Emma would sit and force feed me food and like a petulant child I would refuse saying that it hurt too much or “Donny don’t like” as I pushed my plate away.  We would then barter over the food left on the plate and Emma would divide it up and say “just finish that bit up, there’s a good boy”.  It didn’t quite get to the stage were Emma picked up a spoon full of grub and made choo choo train noises in an attempt to encourage me to open wide, but it wasn’t far off.

How it must have felt to Emma

 

When Emma was at work or not with me at meal times she must have set an alarm because I would, at the designated hour, receive a text asking what I was going to have to eat. In order to put her mind at rest that the appropriate amount of calories had been consumed, I would send a photograph of my plate before and after the meal. But please don’t get me started on photographs of food. What is it about people photographing their dinner and putting it on Facebook – it needs to be one hell of a spectacular meal to warrant a photograph being shared with all of your friends. Whilst this may be a pet hate of mine, I have a very good friend (Dave Clarke) who is driven to distraction if he spots such a posting. “Why the bloody hell do they think that anyone might be interested in what they had for bloody dinner last night”  or some similar rant is spewed out upon sighting fish fingers and chips on someone's timeline.

 

So Dave this is for you:



Breakfast - Before

Breakfast - After











As a footnote, I genuinely appreciate all of the positive comments and likes that the blog is getting (mostly via Facebook) so thank you all.  These signs of support absolutely encourage me to continue which in turn gives me a distraction which I will certainly be appreciative of over the coming months.  

 

I thought you might like to see how international we have become – keep spreading the word folks! x