I am now over 3 months past my course of radiotherapy and I have dry mouth and absolutely no appetite,I have 4 fortysips per day and cereal with hot milk in the morning

No Meat
No veg
No Bread
No real food really


I just do not feel like eating and the lack of taste does not help.I am sick to death of drinking fortysips.Initially I was eating some mousse and trifles but now I cannot face them

I am in no pain and had no surgery

any advice to create an appetite would be great

robert

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Robert E,

Hi Robert

Yes, dry mouth is a nuisance.

I had surgery, then 6 weeks of daily R/T. Course finished about the end of October. I have appetite & eat a fair bit, although food needs to be moist. Pasta & sauce, cereal, that sort of stuff.

I had little sense of taste straight after R/T and was prescribed a course of zinc suplements which worked fairly quickly. Perhaps you should ask about this?

I do a lot of running which no doubt causes the appetite. Don't know if you do any sport, but even walking in the fresh air may help.

Let us know how you get on.

Dear 200, can you please tell me what dosage of Zinc supplement you took & how long did it take to work. Do you have all of your tastes back? Many thanks for any info.

<<No Meat
No veg
No Bread
No real food really>>

Hi Robert I do understand how hopeless this makes you feel. You want to get well and move forward but everything is disgusting. It may be time for a dietician meeting so ask about that or ring to get an appointment for a discussion. Again this is another of those everyone is different problems. I believe you found radiotherapy rough. So did I and my taste plummeted from day 1. Some people go weeks before losing taste and others regain it quickly.

This all needs a diferent approach to normal eating with little and I mean very little and often. So say initially 2 or 3 teaplate meals and later 6 or 7 half teaplate meals a day being your aim. The 'meal' may be nothing more than a single or half item. In the meantime concentrate on very small amounts of foodstuffs. I think you have to forget about the concept of 'waste food' too.

Do not worry about the food being nutritionally sound yet. (This was advice from severel dieticians/cosnsultant.) Try to get the swallow working with any table food you can take. Use a ramekin just half full of food or half an item on a teaplate so you are not overwhelmed or disgusted. Think in terms of 1 tablespoon in a small dish to start with. Even if it is disgusting somehow the very small quantity can become possible. Slowly intake will build.

One of the first savoury things suggested to me and which was savoury and meaty was a liver faggot. Either get some homemade ones at a market or get some frozen ones by Brains. I managed half a one the first time and worked up to a whole one. I have only been eating meat (beef, pork or duck) now and then since year 3 ended. I only use chicken as a flavour in home made golden vegetable soups I can't eat it and enjoy it anymore. So if meat is hard now for you it may be best to try a little fish. I found soft fish best like lemon sole or plaice. But the one meat I did manage were very thin slivers of garlic sausage.

I found the key to eating, was foods with a single strong taste or a single bland taste.

Consider some of these. Remeber anything that will go down is all you need to get you started.

Original round full size Jaffa Cakes. Dipped in tea or drinking chocolate they soften up. The child size ones have less orange so full size are best. I lived off these for weeks with two as ameal and even packed 2 boxes for a holiday. For ages I carried 2 ina bag with me when out to ensure I could have something with my cafe stop.
Biscuits like rich tea or Marie bsicuits buttered, sandwiched and dipped in tea also work.

Bread substitute - try rice cakes or fajitas. Youcan get thin rice cakes. You will of course need plenty of fluid, but both products are less gluey than bread in the mouth and provide that missing vehicle for other foods.
On the rice cake try Philadelphia cream cheese and smoked salmon or mashed very ripe banana or marmite just a touch or mashed boiled egg. My favourite was a smear of golden syrup or jam again single strong tastes.

Veg
Fill fajitas with vegetables like pepper courgette, red onion roasted in the oven in olive oil. Half a one will be ample.

M and S asparagus soup.
Morrisons carrot soup.
Home made veg soup - throw in a whole chicken thigh or 2 rashers of smoked bacon chopped for flavour but discard the meat. Put 2 ladles of the liquor into a soup bowl and about 1 tablespoon of the veg (potatoes carrot onion celery red peeled pepper etc) and crush the cooked veg with a potato masher or fork. I say crush not mash and not liquidize. The small particles of veg start you getting some texture.

Bland - fresh asparagus tips dipped in butter. Just eat the tips.

Very small thin pancakes that are made with butter - they slither better.

Try tinned fruit as it is softer. Tinned pears, mandarin oranges or peaches. If the peaches are still too firm microwave them. It was ages before I could eat fresh fruit and still avoid it on now on days that acid turns on me. You'll get to recognise such days. Ripe (sweeter) blueberrie may be an ok fresh fruit when cooked. I still keep them a few dyas so they get sweeter.

Tinned ambrosia rice pudding with extra milk. Add a spoon of apricot jam or marmalade.
1 egg souffle omelette - 2 eggs can be overwhelming at your stage.
Creme caramel, creme brulee, pannacotta, the centres of M and S custard tart.
Apple tart or apple Danish pastries. With the Danish you might leave three quarters, just eat what you can. I hope you will try a few things here and remember what is bad this week may be ok next week. Keep trying. And of course it goes without saying that none of this will go down without lots of fluid.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: PaulineT,

hi pauline
thanks for all that info on eating etc,i have lost my tastebuds as its now 2 weeks since my first bout of chemo and everything seems to be taking a toll now i have thrush but thanks to reading on here was able to get my district nurse to get me a prescription for some nystatin from my docs,everything tastes of nothing and as i had a gastric bypass last year my tummy will only hold roughly half a pot of yoghurt sized foods as my tummy has been stapled for me to lose weight.tuesday 27th feb i start 33 sessions of radiotheraphy so i guess things are going to get much worse in the eating dept also i will be having 4 days of chemo every 3 weeks too.just wanted to say thanks for this thread as i am sure it will be so helpful.have a nice day,love shirl xxx

Fran
Regret that I don't know the dose. They were prescribed by my hospital, just 1 effervescent tablet each day - quite a nice taste in itself.
Effect was very quick, quite a bit of taste within a week, certainly enough to be enjoyable.
My prefered tastes were quite childish at first - sweet & creamy stuff, couldn't stand any spice - completely unlike my pre-R/T inclinations. Taste has matured since and I now quite like hot spicey food & beer. Sadly I still cannot take to red wine, which I really used to enjoy.

Shirl
That's a tough routine you're going through, best wishes. Keep looking on here, it can be a great help when times are hard.

Yes Shirley being prepared and having the ability to adapt daily can help. But I think half a pot of yoghurt sized meals is what some of us manage after going from technically no table food/ fortisips/or nasal feeding.

I must correct one or two things I wrote above. By fajitas I meant tortilla wraps which I always warm in a dry pan just on each side to soften/freshen them. One of the first things I ever had out was a wrap filled with egg and mayo that my sister and I cut in half and shared. I had the small half and did need 2 pots of tea to get it down. But it was great to eat out.

Celery in soups. I suggest the celery be peeled or destringed as it can catch in the throat as can lentils. Avoid coconut. It was one of my first tastes but I choked horribly. Now the only way I eat coconut is those little yoghurt coconut drinks.

One more food I thought of which is better than many others and is meat is room temperature thinly cut Ox tongue.

Fran I have also taken zinc and it works quite quickly to improve taste some per cent. Mine is just Boots Zinc tub of 60 with one a day capsules on it. The container is orange and the dose 15mg. I like this brand because unlike some whopper pills these are small and can be swallowed. My hospital said let your taste come naturally. I do believe the zinc would have helped me sooner. As soon as I took it things improved within days.

Many thanks Pauline & 200, we,ll try the Zinc. Great suggestions for food Pauline. Its always good to read your posts

As ever the advice on here is most helpful.In terms of the zinc tablets then that is something I never considered but will do now.

After reading you post Pauline one thing that is clear is the biggest battle I have is with my mind and how I visualise food

Anyway I will print this off and give all an update

Hi
guys, Well I can see its a problem for you to taste things.
I had M & N cancer and paret of my tongue removed so my taste buds go haywire.
I can have coffee on day it tastes ok then the next time it taste like tea or soup,The worst thing for me id fod and I eat anything that I can manage to get down but for example on day I may have spagetti and I know what it taste like but when I eat often just tastes far too salty,acidy or even like a spoon of suger and often end up throwing it away.
I dolike yougert andice cream but that to can taste very different evrytime I have it.
One thing I avoid is salt on or cooking with salt and only eat food with a sauce NOT gravy thats makes me physically sick.

Paul

<<<one thing that is clear is the biggest battle I have is with my mind and how I visualise food>>

Robert now you have acknowledged that you have to rethink/relearn eating you are going to make progress. I do wonder if others feel like this, but at first I found it offensive to be buying foods once I would not have touched or put in my trolley. Especially some of the ready meals, tinned products and junkier processed foods. You have to forget thinking for now about a gourmet or healthy looking meal of pre treatment days for a while until you can eat.

You will be able to eat gourmet again, but probably like me find that in future when you read a menu you eliminate what you can’t eat before making a narrow selection from just one or two items. My husband and I always amicably opt for the food items we ‘think’ I can eat. When things arrive they are not always as you expect, maybe drier or less of the main ingredient that caught the eye. We can then swop if need be.

You may find a holiday for a few days or a week somewhere where they have a quality buffet a good idea. 6 months after radiotherapy we did this and I tried lots of odd tablespoons of all sorts of foods I would never have bothered with at home. You can go back for more and if you leave lots on the plate the waiters don’t seem to notice or care.

If you can it’s best to eat table food of some kind every day to keep the swallow open. I could eat slowly, but never realised my swallow had narrowed for about 2 years. Then one Christmas I swallowed a piece of Xmas pudding that was probably too large, but somehow instead of getting stuck, it being firm, yet not solid, the lump squeeze forced itself down and after that I could swallow better. My throat opened up, but I had become used to the new narrower throat in the same way as the stomach shrinkage.

I meant to mention the tortilla wraps can be made more approachable size wise at your stage also by using a scone cutter to make smaller circles, dry pan warming them and adding toppings or create a little sandwich. The key with much of this is very paper thin slices of food which break up better than chunkier slices.

I was also thinking about cocktail food. You know things like the little smoked salmon rolls filled with cream cheese. Cheese – goats cheese is easier to taste as it’s a strong single taste and it’s also soft and can be melted as can brie. Boursin herbs soft cheese on a little scone cut round of tortilla may work for some.

Sausages – for now forget Farmer’s market type chunky meaty sausages you may have loved and opt for Richmond’s thin sausages that are soft. You may also find things like bubble and squeak ok and corned beef is very soft compared to stringy cardboard like chicken. If you bring corned beef or ox tongue out of the frdge before eating it will soften and break up more.

Please don’t despair at aiming to eat only a tablespoon of a particular food. Taste pall is no fun and we all know how devastating it is to see people in supermarkets with trolleys piled high. I began to think why do people need so much food especially at Christmas. But of course they have taste buds that work every day not just some days. Taste comes and goes for all of us, but will be soul destroying for you right now because let’s face it it’s one of the things we look forward too. For me it hasn’t always been about taste, but about the texture of the food. And like Paul I continue to be bewildered why a food that is fine one day can have less taste or seem disgusting the next.

Still amazed Paul that you can tolerate cold ice cream. Never gone back to it or ice in drinks.

Dear Robert,

In general, please just keep trying to eat things, even if you have little urge to do so. I found I got more depressed the less I ate.

Some ideas:

I lived on porridge for weeks after radiotherapy, sprinkling cinammon and sugar on it to give it some flavour. Plus once I could eat things with slightly more texture I added raisins (presoaked along with the porridge).

Plain yoghurt flavoured with aloe vera.

Flavoured soja milk (cold)

Scrambled eggs (very milky ones)

Fish baked in foil with some liquid (mackerel has a strong taste)

Smoked salmon

Pasta with cheese sauce. Penne is easiest to manage as you can just bite once and swallow.

Any homemade soup that was liquidized (the shop bought ones I found too salty.

One thing which was surprisingly nice to taste was liquidised shepherd's pie (texture not ideal but if you are desperate for some taste of meat this might work).

I hope you find something that works.

Redser

Hi Robert, don't know if it will help, but my Dad was told to try eating lemon flavoured things, which they thought would encourage his taste buds and reduced saliva production to improve. Hope you start getting your taste back soon.

tonight I tried one on Paulin'e suggestions and had some very small tortilla's with very thinly cut peppers,courgettes and mushroons.All done in olive oil and plenty of sour cream

I managed to get it down

thanks to all

I'm tempted to say I bet it was horrid the next time you tried it. Although it reminded me how easy they are to eat compared to some foods.

So how are you finding food progress this week?