Radiation treatment is the worst. I had chemo and felt fine 4 weeks after it was over. Took me 7 months to recover from the radiation. I never had a problem with my tastebuds even though the cancer was in my upper jaw.
Oh, and i wish you had offered your advice earlier, then I would have avoided getting cancer in the first place!
How old are you OP?
Question, how did you know you had skin cancer? What did it even look like?
Sorry that this happened to you, garygnu. Also sympathy to everyone else who had similar events.
One of my co-workers recently mentioned that his brother had once lost his sense of taste completely, without knowing if it would ever come back. It did come back, but it took “a few years.” Oh, that sounds bad - the “few years” was the time it took to come back completely. It came back slowly, so the first improvement was sooner.
This came up in a discussion of who did or didn’t like spicy food, because co-worker’s brother substituted hotness for flavor while his taste buds were down. He didn’t like spiciness before, and didn’t really like it during, but for him it was better than nothing.
I think they put it in backwards. That’s not what’s supposed to happen.
I’m 2[sup]3[/sup]+3[sup]3[/sup]. Do I get to count cancer years as double?
Anyway… I had a mole. An irregularly-shaped, really dark black mole. Both my wife and mother had been bugging me about it for years. I finally got it looked at when I got insurance and it started swelling and itching.
It looked like a spot of red rash that wouldn’t go away. It didn’t hurt and it didn’t itch.
What pisses me off is that the warning signs as typically discussed in skin cancer handouts never mentioned anything like this, to my memory. The dark, irregular moles are emphasized, but not a bit of red rash. I’m lucky I went in and didn’t ignore it. I thought it’d turn out to be some sort of psoriasis.
My dad did radiation for neck cancer 3 years ago. I was home for Christmas when he was a bit more than half-way through the treatments. They were awful, so complain away.
He suffered the same loss of taste that you did, and wound up losing 34 pounds. I’m very happy to say that four years later he’s still cancer free and his taste buds have come back (with them came the weight, but I think he might have preferred to leave at some of it behind 
). The only real side effect that he still has today is that his mouth doesn’t produce much saliva anymore, so he has to carry a water bottle around with him.
Part of my problem was that I was not prepared for how bad the side effects got. I was barely recovered from surgery, and focused on the interferon injections that were to follow “a couple weeks” of radiation. A co-worker who had gone through breast cancer said she didn’t have any problems with her radiation treatments. I was in the middle of the retail Christmas season and moving from a 3/2 duplex to a 1/1 upstairs apartment during treatment, plus having my employer change insurance companies.
Just a little sore throat, like a cold. All the heavy lifting was over, then wham! My wife thought I was going to choke to death trying to drink a shotglass of water, for almost two weeks. Like swallowing a hedgehog backward. Very unexpected in its severity and timing.
They took out part of my right saliva gland already, but I haven’t had any problems with mouth dryness yet. Nor has my cheek done the sweat-when-eating thing other people have. In good news, I got movement in my right lower lip for the first time since surgery in September. Just the tiniest twitch that you can’t see, but I can feel it and activate the nerve at will. Yay
This is great news. After a combination of surgery, chemo, and radiation, a friend of mine had absolutely no feeling in part of his leg for…maybe six months? The starting getting little tingles, then a little control. Now, he’s walking without a cane.
Hopefully you keep healing there.
After being delayed and delayed, all over miscommunication between my doctor, the specialty pharmacy, and the insurance company, I finally got my medicine for long-term treatment. It fucking sucks.
It’s called interferon, in case I haven’t mentioned it in this thread yet. I was originally supposed to go through the treatment starting a year and a half ago when I was originally diagnosed. That was cancelled until recurrence, then I did radiation and now this.
It is a protein your body produces when you’re sick. The hope is that your immune system will attack stray melanoma cells. All the while it attacks you, too. My symtoms so far:
Nausea
Cold sweats
Nausea
Pain and weakness everywhere
Nausea
Diareaha
Nausea
Fatigue
The first hit four hours after the injection, while I was making dinner. For the next two days I was pretty much bedridden if not in the bathroom. I’m at work now, but not of much use.
Ugh. Sorry for ranting. Again, don’t get cancer. It kinda sucks.
Is there medication you can take for the nausea? I had heard that “these days” cancer patients did not have to suffer with bad nausea as there were meds for that. I would asusme if there was such your doctor would have mentioned it but given the crap you went through to get the interferon, maybe not. Might be worth asking someone (maybe a nurse?).
And I do hope you feel better soon. This has been going on long enough! (too long!)
Good luck.
Damn. Here’s hoping that it settles down. How long are you supposed to be taking it?
Isn’t that the original use for medicinal marijuana? Helping with nausea?
Seconding all three sentiments.
There are definitely meds you can ask about to keep the nausea in check. Here is some info on Zofran (Ondansetron), which has been helping me lately, but you could also ask about Promethazine (Phenergan), Metoclopramide (Reglan), and Prochlorperazine (Compro or Compazine).
I had kidney cancer that spread to my lung when I was twelve, back in 1990. I went through chemo and radiation. The treatments changed how I experienced touch, smell, and the way I tasted food. A lot of things took on a metallic taste, some things were bitter and some flavors and smells just disappeared. I found one trick to help me choke down enough to stay off the feeding tube. I would watch cooking shows while I ate and for some reason that would help. Most of my senses were more or less normal after a couple of years but some things were never quite right again.
Currently, room temperature water tastes like tin foil. It has to be ice cold for me to drink much of it without throwing up. Tomatoes must be combined with something else or they’ll taste like foil or blood. I can only taste sour cream if it’s on something else. By itself it’s like it’s not real. There’s a creamy texture and nothing. Most greens are inedibly bitter. Spinach doesn’t smell so bad but it tastes like something that was never meant to be food. Sometimes I have “ghost smell” moments. I could swear I smell pizza or a cake baking and there’s nothing there. Weird stuff.
I hope you can get relief from your symptoms soon. Making you as comfortable as possible should be part of your treatment plan. Don’t let your doctor(s) be slack about pain management or keeping any other things that interfere with your quality of life in check. Don’t think you’re just supposed to suffer quietly and stay out of the way. Tell them what’s going on with you and that you need some help. Good luck, best wishes and all that. 