Loss of Taste after Tonsillectomy

While everyone is different, you should be back to 100% normal tasting around six months. Could take longer, though. The film thing is normal too :-) Compared to when you first noticed your loss/change of taste, has it gotten any better for you?

Yes, I am now able to taste sweet things and I can taste chicken and some meat products. Still cannot taste my Olive Garden soups or Fried Pickles which I love so very much. I am able to taste some things compare to when I first notice my taste was greatly off. First I would experience a metallic taste, then my taste would be very, very salty and bitter. I then started taking Zinc tabs 25 mg once a day and I believe that then help. On July 7, 2016, it will be 4 months since my taste has been off. I was just really concern because I was reading posts where other people were saying their taste has not returned in over 9 months to a year. Again, I became very scare. I plan on seeing my doctor on July 7; however, your response has given me a lot of hope!!!!!

Yeah, I wouldn't worry since your sense of taste is getting better. My doctor told me this is normal, and that it can take up to a year. I HOPE it doesn't take THAT long.... You got this :-)

It's been 2 years I still can't taste my food can some one tell me why

it doesnt mean it will stay that way, but as for your question...
they say some particular nerve gets thrown off its normal functioning and sometimes a lack of certain vitamins and minerals can speed recovery up. I'm sure you've looked through previous posts here already, but if by chance you havent, there are lots of opinions and advice about everything. very helpful stuff, if you havent already seen it all!

Has there been any change?

Did anything eventually work????

Did you ever get to 100%???? I'm 9 weeks out and only at like 20%. I feel so hopeless.

It is nice to read i am not the only one i thought i was going crazy i have had mine out for 5 weeks now and older when i got them out but same as you i dont taste anything and always thirsty not to mention the horrible taste that just does not go away no matter what you do. Sad to read all these other comments and see this may be either long term or permenant. I hope everyday for normal but it has not happened yet. I hope you get your taste back one day.

Hello everyone! I see that I'm not the only one having this taste issues. It will be 30 days since my surgery and my taste varies from day to day. There are some things I can taste but once I got to swallow its gone. Food doesn't taste the same to me anymore. On top of the fact that I can't taste its like I have a rash in the back of my throat and it feels like I have cotton stuck in my mouth all the time. Can anyone relate?

Hi everyone - I just wanted to post my experience with loss of taste after a tonsillectomy and provide some light at the end of the tunnel. I am an 18 year old female and had my tonsils removed on the 28th of June this year. I had a very rough recovery and a bad reaction to pain medication so I barely ate any food in the first two weeks, however when I started to eat I noticed a terrible taste from basically everything sweet, and savoury things I could barely taste at all. Nothing tasted even close to be right and most things I could taste for what felt like half a second and then it disappeared. Obviously I became very distressed and started researching, I even looked through this forum and became very depressed. My doctor told me it would return in a minimum of 3months or a maximum of 2 years - this uncertainty nearly drove me crazy and as food was such an enjoyable part of my life it gave me a significant amount of depression. For over a month I lived on beef noodles (which barely tasted like anything but I enjoyed the texture) and peanut butter on toast (this didn't taste right either but it didn't taste horrible). Soft drink tasted like bleach, chocolate tasted like chemicals, I couldn't taste eggs at all, dairy products tasted as though they were off - I was extremely distressed. After about 2months I realised I could taste eggs again, or at least more than before, and some tastes weren't 'disappearing' after a few bites. Savoury foods seemed to be coming back, although a bit duller, and I started to eat things like mcdohnalds nuggets and chips, pasta with tomato sauce (tomato sauce/tomato based sauces actually tasted the closest to normal strangely enough) and steak. It slowly improved over a few weeks, I could eat spaghetti, garlic bread, vegemite toast (These all tasted OK but still not how they did before). Sweet things were still untouchable.

It had hit over 3 months and I was very anxious as I was hoping it would all come back - my doctor told me it may came back slowly and then probably all at once. It seemed unlikely that I would wake up suddenly with my taste back - but that seems to be basically what's happened. At the start of October, over a couple weeks, everything just seemed to start tasting right. Barbeque shapes, pizza, milk, cheese, samosas, basically everything savoury was tasting good - I'd say it was 90% back with just a few weird tastes every now and then. Then a week later I tried a piece of birthday cake and realised I could taste the icing and the sweetness (something that seemed totally missing before) and it tasted very nice :) I Also had a vanilla milkshake which almost tasted 100% normal. So that's where I am now, I'd say my taste is over 90% recovered and it has taken just over 3 months. In those 3 months I lost 11kg and struggled mentally with the uncertainty but I just wanted to post to say that my taste is basically fully recovered and is improving even more each day.

My doctor advised that loss of taste is probably related to nerve damage, and that in order to promote the nerve's recovery that you should take zinc supplements - I took a zinc tablet every day as well as two other supplements meant to promote nerve growth (L-Glutamine 750 and Alpha Lipoid 300), and I'm assuming these helped me with a quick recovery :)

I hope this gives people some hope as it seems like the taste can come back very suddenly, so don't give up and focus on the small improvements when they come by :)

Did you ever get your taste back? I had surgery August 10, 2016 and still cannot taste food good at all. Especially cheese and hot stuff

Help I'm 2 months out did you ever recover I think I live on the salt planet too

Hi there,
Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you got your taste back? And how long did it take?
I have the same problem, it's been 2 months and no improvement!
Thanks for sharing

I lost my taste for about 6-8 months after my tonsillectomy. Many foods (especially pizza, gravies and meats) tasted weird. Things got so bad that I lost about 15 pounds without even trying. I needed to lose weight, but that wasn't the way I wanted to do it! It was very concerning and scary to go through that. I thank God it was temporary and pray yours will be temporary as well.