I am 20 days post surgery and can finally tolerate swallowing. However, I can not taste any food. It is an aweful feeling. When I eat I generally get a sick feeling to my stomach because I get the sensation like I have eaten something gross. Soda taste like seltzer water. It is depressing. I used to love cheese, chocolate, and all kinds of cakes and pastries. Now they are so gross to me. Because of the lack of taste, I notice the textures. It is like a glop of ooey gooey ugh and I can't stand it. Eating is not pleasurable and I would rather not eat anything. I don't even get hungry anymore and the thought of eating makes me sick to my stomach and depressed. I am loosing a lot of weight. I am wondering if things will get better and if ther is the possibility the I have any nerve damage? If so, can it be repaired? Or is it just a side effect of the surgery?
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I just want to say that I am 40 years old and I had my tonsils out in April and it is now going into November and I still cannot taste things correctly. Sweets taste DISGUSTING- (and I love sweets lol) Syrup on pancakes is gross. Salty taste ok .I keep hoping that it will come back but I have given up. It is very fustrating though.
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Hi thought I may be able to help with the long term outcome ... I had my tonsils out 13 years ago and I can remember a long time of no taste it did come back gradually i'd say it took about a year to come back enough to properly enjoy food, however to this day sometimes I have to concentrate to properly taste chocolate and some other foods !! think I've just got used to it the way it is now, I do find the sharpnesss of some foods not the same or at least I think thats the case. I sometimes wonder if I could have my taste back like before I had the op would I be amazed by the difference.
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Hey I have been here and done all this with a few variations...... :-( I had my tonsils removed in July and well it's The NEW YEAR 2011......I had the metallic taste for awhile, then no taste,then everything tasted salty.......even ice cream.....yeah I'm older to have just had tonsils removed, lets say between 37 and 45 and female.....but anyway......My Doctor said he never has had a patient that didnt have their taste back in 6 months, but he has 2 wks before he gets a visit from me again and it is horrible........I regret it.....i can't taste unless it is spicy or really sweet.......I have no desire for my favorite foods....so my holidays suck...the things I normally love, ate horrid........I'm not a picky eater or much on sweets before surgery, but now, nothing is good unless it is spicy or really sweet.......So I eat icecream alot......and I drink strong coffee with sugar and peppermint to get some enjoyment out of it.......it is terrible...... >:( I did lose weight from 130 to 110, but now mu husband thinks I'm too thin....I'm not......but anyway......I miss the enjoyment of food, I can't taste what I cook for my family and have to ask them if it is alright........I oversalt or undersalt ............add way too much spice........or it's bland........and sweets are real sweet.........so I'm miserable........my advice to over 30 people......take a sore throat on occasion and be happy when it's over you can enjoy your favorite foods.........this has been horrid and I hate to cook now because of it and It is a hobby of mine....which I can no longer enjoy the savory taste of all my favorites and it is not a great experience for my immediate family that know I could care less what I cook how it taste or if we ever dine out anymore............If anyone has this too let me know, I love the feedback
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I had my tonsils removed in November of 2010 I am 49 and I would rather give birth with no drugs and a root canal every week than go through this! It was the worst experience of my life. I have the metallic taste,crazy thirst and cannot taste any foods either. In addition I have had stiff tight muscles in my neck and I cannot turn my head to one side it has become very painful. I have been trying to deal with the whole no taste but it is really frustrating as I love to eat too. Thank you for posting it really does help to know it's not just me. I know its only been 9 weeks so maybe it will start to turn around. Here's to 2011 being the year of the tonsil recovery!!!
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I had surgery August 12th 2010...removale of adenoids ab tonsills...I still cannot taste salt or sweet...very frustrating..nothing tastes like it use to.I'm beginning to think it must be permanent...I don't enjoy eating anymore, I do it because I have to. Maybe a year later I will post something possitive but for now....no taste...I have not been sick since surgery so I guess thats a plus!!!
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When I am having a bad day, I like to search the internet for peoples stories of getting their taste back....I hope that those stories will be us soon. I am 31 and had my tonsillectomy Oct. 29, 2010 and it took me a couple of weeks to even realize that something was wrong. I should count myself lucky because I am only experiancing the bizarre radiating bitterness and messed up taste on the right side, my left side seems to be functioning normally. I have yet to read about someone having a "one-sided" problem. My ENT has never encountered this problem with any of his patients (he is the same age as me) and my GP has never heard of this happening, I will be seeing my ENT again next week and am hoping for at least a hug. So it has been just a little over 3 months for me, and sometimes I think that the bitterness may be subsiding slightly, and sometimes it seems so intense that I have trouble concentrating on anything else. I also feel a foreign feeling on the messed up side that feels like swelling or numbness, very disturbing. I wish you all the best, this is such a miserable problem, it is nice to be able to share my rant with people that understand what I am talking about. I hope to hear some healing stories soon.
Sarah
Sarah
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Everyone please look up Dr. Alan Hirsch. I'm currently seeing him right now. He specializes in all of these cases, and he is trying out medications that could possibly regenerate the nerves. I'm on medication number 3, and I haven't really seen any results, but everyone is different. Please check him out, because if you don't try, you won't know. Plus they have great lawyers from what I hear.
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i am 14days out of surgery and not only did my voice not return until 2 days ago, but mu tongue goes numb everytime i eat as well, as everything i eat taste bitter. I honestly can.t eat anything without some awful taste being in my mouth. I don,t even really want to eat there is no pleasure in it. Does anyone have any suggestions.
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Sorry to hear of your troubles. Soon after the surgery everything is absolutely haywire in your mouth, try and give it some time to let it settle down and keep your ENT informed about your experiances and concerns. I am 7 months post-op and I am still having taste issues but my ENT and I have not lost hope.... nerves are an extremely slow thing to heal. I hope you find a good distraction because I remember how slow the time seemed move, I am sending out my best healing vibes to you.
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Reading these posts is only depressing me more. I have to force myself to eat because everything tastes HORRID. I can not even begin to describe how terrible food and drinks taste. My muscles in my throat hurt and feel so tight. Honestly my throat feels like it is almost closed off it is so tight. I no longer enjoy food in the least and it is VERY depressing!!!! I truly hope my taste comes back!!!!
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I had mine out May 6, 2011. Still can't taste and have a matellic taste in my mouth. I can taste if the flavor is really intense but only for a few bites then it is all cardboard. in the past week it seems to be getting worse I used to be able to taste salt but now no matter how much i put there is no flavor. I used to enjoy eating but not anymore. The worse is when you eat something and you remember how it should taste but all you taste is cardboard
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Hey........I had my tonsils removed last July (2010) I regained my taste and smell (I also had a deviated septum repaired) around January of 2011. It was horrid for awhile, the overly sense of too much salt was the problem I was having, and the inability to taste spices........I'm from Texas and have lived in Louisiana for 23 yrs.....so I like spices.....so it would take alot more spices for me to even get a good taste in my mouth....but all is good and working as they should now..........just alot of sweets and I gained 5lbs....due to the sweets.... but eating and loving it again...... be patient!
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Hopefully i can give everyone some hope!!! I think we just have to be patient, but here goes a document of my experience so far :
i was super scared at first and when i came online to read up, i got super depressed. i LOVE food, i love trying new and foreign stuff, i love highly spiced things. at first i thought i had done it to myself from over-using cherry Chloraseptic (i admit i used it way more often than the bottle said to) and eating a lot of Luden's cherry throat drops. then i thought maybe it was just all the codeine (also a weird gross cherry flavor). I mean, for a while there my mouth tasted like cherry 24/7. then i noticed some numbness in the center of my tongue, the largest part. So i realized it was probably the clamp they put on your tongue during surgery that was causing all this chaos. So i said, well at least that seems temporary... Then i read some scary stories on the web of people saying they had nerve damage. i panicked a little but kept trying to read more to find hope. i didnt find too many pages where people actually updated often on their progress. so i thought i'd come here and contribute. and i promise to update when there are changes!
today is July 25th, so its been nearly one month. yesterday i ate a Ritz Crackerful with cheese and one "veggie" flavored one -- i could taste them both fine!!! the weird thing is, it seems to change daily. Just the day before yesterday, i tried a spicy chicken sandwich from a fast food place and i could barely taste it and was just sad again. so, the crackers today were a total surprise. i kept experimenting. things i can now taste: Lay's lemon & salt potato chips, some little pretzels flavored with Srirracha powder, anything chocolate, mint gum, peanut butter, Nescafe coffee that is cinnamon flavored & slightly sweetened, Luden's cherry throat drops (so it wasnt their fault!), fresh spinach sauteed with butter and onions (i'm a health nut, this was a favorite and thankfully it is the same), scrambled eggs with salt & pepper, bacon. weird tastes: canned chicken made into chicken salad (mustard, pepper, onion, garlic) tastes AWFUL, like unseasoned bird! Fresh tomatoes taste like they already have salt on them (a good thing!), strawberry yoghurt tasted like pure sour cream, soda tastes like seltzer water. and almost everything else is just rather bland: veggie burgers, fajitas, japanese 'spicy chicken' and yakitori, japanese mochi dessert, iced green tea, barley tea, apple cinnamon oatmeal, flan, curry pork, sour cream dip, plain potato chips. Pepperoni pizza was 0% flavor and now at like 80%!!! At times my mouth has a sour taste for no reason. Water is a little ruined because of that - it just makes it worse. I never did have the "bad breath" that was supposed to come post surgery, though. I still have very little of that rough feeling at the back of the tongue - i think it's just those pebbly looking things that live back there (wow, that's a really non-technical way of putting it, but i dont know their name) and they are inflamed. at first i felt it A LOT, but thankfully now, that feeling is nearly gone entirely. I also went from one day being in horrible pain under my chin/jaw when i would yawn, to the very very next day being in almost no pain at all when i yawn.
what else? the first two weeks i was producing SO MUCH thick phlegm and sometimes just foamy looking saliva - i was spitting into a tissue constantly and it was horrible! just like many other things i've mentioned, it was there constantly and full on, then overnight sometime last week it just totally disappeared, 100% gone.
i will keep eating -- if it's what i read on a few sites: a connection in the brain gone haywire because of the nerve being clamped -- then my layperson's scientific conclusion is that practicing/retraining this connection may be helpful. so, if something isnt just gross, i try it even though it will likely be bland. i am trying as many different flavors as i can as often as i can, and really concentrating on them when i do, also smelling them a lot before i taste them. maybe those are totally BS desperation attempts to fix it, but it cant hurt to try. supposedly the brain will make connections and retrain itself with practice of anything that isnt permanently screwed up. i'm being optimistic and telling myself we arent permanently screwed! i will keep you all posted!
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hey guys,
ok, one week later i'm still having small improvements, but not at 100% yet.
the fact that anything changes at all is really good, i think!
hopefully you all are having some, as well.
for me, the numbness in my tongue is totally gone, still some pain at the root of my tongue (it really sucks when i yawn).
the sour taste is totally gone.
a few salty foods are back and good, like ramen and turkey coldcuts.
a frozen pizza was still utterly tasteless, though.
veggies of all kinds are awesome (had chinese Lo-Mein noodles w/veg and was ecstatic).
some other website said the taste troubles could be linked to Zinc deficiency post surgery,
so ive started taking 50mg a day in supplement form.
also eating zinc-full foods like peanuts, dark chocolate, wheat germ in my oatmeal and sesame seeds.
worth a try!
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