Taste Following Tonsillectomy

Hi... I'm wondering how things turned out for you as far as being able to taste?

Hi, I was wondering if you regained your normal sense of taste after all this time?

Kinda sorta... things still don't taste quite right, but you do kinda get used to it. It's not as bad as it was, but it's not back to normal either.

No, not normal. It got better, but it didn't return to normal. Things still taste... off. Things like spicy foods and marinara sauce taste a little off. I can't eat italian sausage anymore, the taste is just too far off for me. Milk tastes strange, so my cereal consumption is about 1/10th what it was, which honestly, isn't really a bad thing. You get used to it, but it doesn't go back to normal, not in my experience, anyway.

Hi.

I am 4 months post op, and have noticed that there seem to be 3 types of patients posting on here.

There are the 3 days to 4 week post ops, don't worry, things tasted weird for lots of us. (popcicles HURT, for a lack of a better word) Find bland foods that aren't so bad (campbell's cream of chicken soup and thinned down cream of wheat got me through the first 2 weeks). Hopefully everything will return to normal.

There are those of us that lost, but regained most of our taste. I have had a bitter/salty taste for the last 4 months. It might be better than it used to be, but maybe I'm just getting used to the feeling. Many of us might just have to learn to enjoy new types of foods and drinks. (I love water like never before) I may look into the zinc therapy I have heard about on here. My sense of taste has steadily been improving, but I still have the bitter/salty taste that makes my mouth water constantly. Hopefully that will improve over time, too.

Then there are those who seem to be permanently stuck in the early stage of this where nearly everything tastes awful and they can't get any pleasure from their food. I would encourage you to try some of the treatments people have suggested (zinc, accupuncture) to try and help this condition. It took a long time for me to be able to stomach many of the things I love again. It seems that most people recover their taste more quickly, and a few of you more slowly. Don't give up on it, though. It may just be a slower recovery.

I have also noticed many people complaining about a lack of understanding or knowledge from the doctors. This was also my experience, and is tremendously frustrating. I don't know what we could do, but it seems like there are a lot of one-in-a-millions on here. Maybe this hasn't been properly documented because it isn't even easy to describe to others, let alone to someone who may not want to hear they did real damage.

Family members need to support all of us. Tt seems trivial to them. "Oh, big deal, so things don't taste good anymore. There are worse things." There are, but anyone who hasn't experienced this can't really understand how bad this can be. I nearly cried when ice cream tasted good again. (I'm a 6 foot, 260pound construction worker, so yeah, nearly.) An earlier poster described this condition best for someone who hasn't experienced it- "Imagine all you had to eat was toothpaste and all you drank was orange juice." It doesn't taste like orange juice, or toothpaste or both, it tastes like something... different.

I'll check back in a couple of months, hopefully things will keep getting better.

 

Hi, I'm from Portugal and I''ve posted here for the first time in Aug or Sept 2010. I've had surgery about two years and a half now and my throat is still sensitive to spicy or very salty food, but regarding taste, it never went back to normal. I mean, I don't notice it all the time but it feels like my brain just got used to it and interprets the way things taste now like normal but except for savory food, most tastes are a little off especially dairy products and chocolate (which I loved and now have little interest in). The conclusion I get from all this is you never get better, you just get used to your new condition over time and assume it as normal. Which is normal regarding that what caused it probably was nerve damage during surgery... Good luck everyone! I hope everything goes well

i am  in 20 day post tonsillectomy i lost salt taste and i started to develop acny 

 

Did anyone get their taste back?? please help

Im at 7 weeks post op and everything still tastes bad.  Different levels of bad, but bad none the less.  I have a constant bad taste in my mouth and I am really starting to get angry.  I have seen no improvement in the last month, and I was NEVER told that this might happen. When i stated to the staff at the ENT that i was not informed this was even possible,  I was told that I should have read up on it!@!  I went balistic.  Then the id**t(doctor) said that there was nothing he did that could possibly cause this and that maybe it's a medication or gerd or in my imagination.  I'm not on any meds, I'm not imagining this, and I'm not paying the bill until my taste comes back and if they dont like it, tough!   I love to cook and actually am the primary cook in the family, but not I'm doing it blind for the most part.  I can smeill it and see it but nothing tastes right at all.  I loved to eat fish and have tens of thousands invested in fishing gear to catch fish i can no longer even eat.  I also work at a beef plant and have feezers full of steaks that i can also not eat.  If my taste does not come back, I'm going to start smoking again after 18 years because it just wont fricken matter anymore!

I had my tonsils out two years ago.  I completely lost my taste of sweet, but there was a metallic taste when I ate sweet things. My doctor and everyone else told me it would come back within a year as the nerves grew but it didn't.  strangely I could kind of taste sweet in splenda, but not quite.  I had read a book called "the brain that changes itself" about brain plasticity the summer before.  It was about how when one sense is gone (i.e. finger chopped off) the brain that used to control that is "rewired" to do other things, usually the areas of the brain that control the nearby fingers get larger and their coordination grows.  My taste for savory things has grown and I can taste so many other flavors so much better than I could before.  It was still depressing not having the sugar and I've never been quite the same since that tonsillectomy.  I know it can be much worse from the posts I've read.  The good news is that after two years I can order unsweet tea and tell that I have sweet tea.  It actually tastes a little sweet but still not the same as before. This has just started in the last 2 months. I don't know if nerves are  still growing or if the brain is taking what few signals exist when tasting sweet things and making that register as sweet.  The metallic taste is gone, so maybe that is being interpreted as the sweet instead of metallic, just a hypothesis.  Either way it is good to have that sense back in part.  There is hope for it to get better, but it will likely never be how it once was.  But for the brain to change itself you have to keep eating sugary things in many forms.  I've eaten sugary things like normal even when it didn't taste good and now I might be reaping the benefits by "re-calibrating" my brain.  Hang in there and good luck!

I don't know if anyone else is still following this thread, but for me it's still just a bit off. It's much better, but certain things are still just a bit off. I don't really foresee that changing anytime soon. I think it's just something that I have come to accept.

Don't lose hope. It takes a while and it won't be quite the same, but it will come back for the most part. It's been a year and a half for me and it's a lot better now, almost back to normal. Either that or my brain has compensated. My ENT people didn't tell me this was a possibility either, until I called them, panicked. Then she told me that it happens in about 12% of people. I was furious, they didn't give a c**p. I feel your pain, my fiance and I are foodies, too... although you're pretty well on your own with the fish. ;-)
I personally went to super spicy foods and for some reason that helped, I don't know why. I also developed a taste for foods I didn't like previously. I have nearly no tolerance for sweets anymore, but vinegary hot wings are now a beloved treat, whereas before I refused to even touch them.
Bottom line, it takes a boatload of time for those nerves to grow back. Longer than they will tell you, I'll be honest. The good news is that it's gradual, so if you don't realize it, that doesn't mean it isn't getting better.
It takes a LONG time. Months and months, before you start to feel normal again.
Others have had different experiences. For me it was the hot, spicy and vinegary things that got me through it. I kind of started going further and further outside my usual foods to try to find things that I could taste. That might be an option for you, I don't know.
I wish you the best, my friend.

Yes, for the most part. It just takes a LOT longer for those nerves to heal than they tell you, if they tell you anything at all. It took me a few months to be able to taste and even now, a year and a half later, some things are still a bit off, but most things are good again.

Thanks for the reply and the hope. I guess i will have to continue to try different things. I have notices that I can eat any spice or heat level and it doesnt seem to bother me. Hot sauce doesnt taste hot or hurt but it still turns my face red, lol. Sad part is I work for a meat processing plant and have abundant access to my old favorite... Steaks!!! Unfortunately I can't stand to eat them anymore as they taste like metal and very nasty. Oh well... on to other things.

I empathize with all of you here. I'm about to share a rather long story, but I think it's worth reading. I am 40 yrs. old and had my tonsillectomy about 4-5 wks. ago. I cannot tell you how much praying I have done in the past 6 wks. I am a woman of faith but I found myself quite vulnerable during this little adventure. I know that God is faithful and is seeing me through this. So, one complication after another and here I am. It's a sad thing that we all have similar experiences with our Drs. I received no pre-op counselling whatsoever. I found myself feeling like a paranoid stalker everytime I called their office to get info. that they should have spent time to give me BEFORE the surgery. I should have asked more questions pre-op but the excitement at the prospect of no longer dealing with chronic tonsillitis made me "giddy as a school girl", fool. No, I would not have had the surgery had I known in advance the "possible but rare" consequences. Starting with the unimaginably dry mouth at night. My mouth was DRY AS A BONE. Weirdly like paper or leather left in the sun. Anyway, this combined with antibiotics led to thrush (a fungal infection of the mouth, yay) for which the nystatin barely worked. Not to mention I practically had to beg the Dr. for the prescription. If this happens to you, try brushing your tongue and palates with a 1:1 solution of hydrogen peroxide and purchase Herb-Pharm's: Fungus Fighter compound, it tastes horrible but it works better and quicker than nystatin at half the price plus it is natural. I have to mention also that my tongue hurt so bad! It was huge and bruised for over a week. Chewing gum all the time helped with that exponentially. Then things got worse. I, like most of you looked in my throat with a bright light at least once a day to monitor my lovely thrush and the healing progress. It was about the middle of the second week and the mirror revealed a hole beginning to develop in one of my tonsil beds. I have had too much pain and too little sleep and food at this point, so needless to say I cried, and I am not a cryer. Again I have to call that office and ask yet another question. This time they want to have a look.! Please do! I did let them know that I would not be paying for this unexpected visit. Oddly, they agreed. So, by the time I was seen the next day the hole covered my entire tonsil bed with only a little thread of flesh attached at the top and bottom. It was stretched like a bungee from my soft palate to a place behind my tongue that I can't see. Painful? Yes. So when I got there I saw the Dr's PA. He tried to make me feel uninformed and paranoid. He says "This happens all the time". Turns out the tonsil bed was over-cauterized and as the dead cells shed away a hole was revealed. Great. The solution: another procedure 6 wks. post-op to remove the bungee flesh! (which I also will not be charged for, fishy eh?) Guess what? This really isn't as common as he would have me believe. I have internet and am literate my friend! I am holding back my frustration and since I am a Christian, I try not to swear and am trying not to start now. All of that said, the whole taste issue has been yet another complication I have experienced. I hoped it would improve when the thrush cleared up. It has been so difficult, I'm surprised how emotionally attached to my sense of taste I am. I've never been a big foodie, I weighed 125 lbs. pre-op, which is alot for me since I struggle to keep weight on because apparently I have the metabolism of a field mouse. Well...I've lost 10% of my body weight which I didn't need to do. My clothes are hanging on me and so is my skin. If only I could eat. Food is sometimes downright disgusting! I have found that soft foods or cakey, bread-like foods are the worst regardless of sugar or salt content. I really only want crunchy and crisp things. They don't irritate my gag reflex like the mushy, soluble stuff. Now I confess, I have cried, lost hope and gotten angry through all this. It has been a lesson in patience for me. I am healing. Just the past couple of days the hole in my throat is somehow, against all odds, closing up. Where there was a 1 in. diameter hole, the flesh came together (without stitches) and is knitting itself back together! My sense of taste is slowly improving and I fully expect to have it restored to me completely very soon! God is good! This story is mine to tell, praise God! It is a story of fear vs. faith. I have always known that they repel each other like water and oil. I know this but I had some weak moments and found myself in a place of fear where faith cannot work it's beauty. So my best advise is this: Don't sink into fear, rise up in faith through the name of Jesus Christ. He heals!