I started noticing another side effect of the radiation, and did a little research before I actually chalked this one up to radiation. My sense of taste has gone wacko.
I’ve been noticing something amiss with it the last few days, but yesterday it really started to kick in. When I’m not eating, my mouth tastes salty, like I gargled with seawater, and foods have to have pretty strong flavor for me to taste anything at all. I noticed it while having breakfast at McDonald’s yesterday morning that everything was completely flavorless. I probably could have gotten the same flavors by eating my napkin.
Noticed a similar effect with my lunch. The only thing I really tasted were the onions on my sandwich. Not the meat, not the cheese.
Had pizza for dinner, only thing I could really taste were the banana peppers. (By the way, I don’t normally eat like this. Yesterday was an exception to almost every dietary normalcy.) Had a Bridgeport Hop Czar Imperial IPA, the bitter came through pretty well, but it wasn’t as aggressive as I’d normally expect.
Did some quick online research last night, apparently taste changes and impairment are very common with radiation to the head and neck, sometimes with measurable impairment 5-7 years later. From what I am getting the majority of it goes away after 90-120 days, but in the meantime, everything tastes bizarre, if at all.