I had a tonsillectomy on 2/7. My taste buds have failed to return to "normal tasting." Food tastes extremely bland and sometimes even metallic. I am no longer taking pain medications. I still have some white scabs in the back of my throat. But I am able to eat a normal diet. Has anyone experienced this after a tonsillectomy? How long does it take to correct itself? Could this possibly be a result of going off the pain medications? Any advice or remedies are appreciated.

Hello,

While searching for information for my mom, who had a tonsillectomy on February 6th I came across your message. She is still having problems with her taste buds and the doctor that performed the surgery thinks this is normal, but her family doctor says he has never seen this before. She had spoken with a woman who had this problem for 6 weeks and suddenly it all came back to normal. She is very frustrated and upset. How long has it been for you and what have the doctors said about it?

Tastebuds and Tonsillectomy, now that's a chapter! My son had a tonsillectomy 2 yrs ago and i had mine earlier this month (Feb. 11th).
For each of us the tastebud thing was noticeable. For him, it only lasted about a week where things were tasting weird/ickie/not right. But he's just a kid under 12. He healed quickly.
For me, i'm just over 40 and am not healing as quickly. the taste issue remains for me. things that i used to enjoy as "sweet" seem to have a bitter aftertaste, or they taste "industrial" or like used antifreeze (metallic, i guess). it is getting better as time goes by (i'm at the beginning of week 3, post-op), which is good. as long as a person has white patches in the throat/tongue area, the skin is still actively healing--coated with mucous and trying to get normal again--and this will take a while. apparently for some of us...several weeks! not 7-14 days!
hang in there, and believe in yourself and your powers of healing.
i've already been re-hospitalized (last week) due to dehydration and severe pain and throat swelling. i did not know if i'd make it out alive, but i did, thanks to my gen. practioner, not the ENT surgeon, who had insisted i simply "tough it out."
there is a lot they don't tell us grown-ups about how it is different when they mess with our throats. there is a lot more they can/do cut away, cauterize, and mess with, for one thing! and our muscles and jaws take quite a beating from the procedure. all this trauma means time, much more time, for us to heal. keep a journal, and chronicle the road for yourself. you'll find that you can make it after all!

Thanks very much to you folks who wrote about the post tonsillectomy abnormal and irregular taste syndrome. I was going crazy trying to find info. to see if it was just me or not. I am at two weeks as of today for tonsillectomy and very upset and aggravated about the lack of taste & irregularly horrid taste of foods I use to love. Suffice to say I am not up to eating a whole lot yet- due to pain--but I have to say since Thursday of last week the taste issue has become more of a factor.It is awful and very, very scary. Anyhow, I also must mention I was put on Clotrimazole (Mycelex) lozenges as of last Tuesday for white spots that the Dr. noticed in my mouth and on my incision site. It was a fungal infection he said- due to all the antibiotics.

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sandgal

I had surgery on July 3 and I am in my fifties. Now it is 7 weeks later and I still don't have my taste back. My doctor says call him at the end of this month to give a status. He said they had my tongue in a holder device and perhaps that is a factor but he did say this is unusual. At my age it is everything he had warned me of - weeks of pain, trouble eating....things I've read in other people's notes. It is encouraging to read that there are people out there that also have this yucky taste in their mouth post surgery, It is almost like there are cotton balls stuck halfway down my throat. There seems to be no inclination to eat anything because there's no difference between things, needless to say weight loss of 12 + pounds has occurred -which is o.k but I hope my taste returns. P.S. foods have to highly spiced with taco sauce or wasabi paste to enjoy.

I am 30 and I had a tonsillectomy almost 2 weeks ago. I have went to the E.R. twice for severe dehydration. The pain sucks, but everything tasting terrible is worse. I had know idea It was going to be this bad. I have been so frustrated. I cry all the time. I have tried to eat everything you could imagine and it tastes terrible especially sweet things. I really wish my E.N.T would have prepared me a little better, other than telling me it will be painful for about 2 weeks. This really sucks! God when will food taste good again??????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????

I can feel your frustration, all of you. It's a very, very gradual process, but eventually you will most likely get your sense of taste back. It doesn't seem like it now, but it's such a gradual return to normal that you won't even realize that it's starting to return. At least that's how it happened for me, and how it appears to happen to many others, if you read the posts here from people who have been through it.

The reason why it happens is because during the surgery, the doctor has to clamp your tongue very hard in certain places to keep it out of the way while he is performing the operation. The severity of the clamping sort of kills your taste buds at that part of your tongue in the back. It takes a while for the sensation to return. I'm not sure if ya'll noticed after your surgery how much your tongue probably hurt for at least a week or two later. It was the severe clamping endured by your tongue that caused it.

Anyway, it's only a very, very small percentage of people who actually lose their taste for good after the surgery. It's more highly likely that you'll all be in the group of people (such as myself) who took a while to get back to normal.

Just realize that the sense of taste WILL RETURN, it will just take some time. I got to the point where I was calling my ENT every single day for a while complaining about the loss of taste and he kept saying it was normal. I didn't believe him. But I'm telling you all, as I sit here typing this, all I know is that it was such a gradual return back to normal that I'm really not even sure how long it took. Sure it felt like forever, but I'm sure it was not any more than just over a month or two in total.

What Bracelet said is correct but I had a totally different reason for the bad taste. It seems that my scabs were causing me to taste nothing but salt! The doctor even told me that the combination of scabs and mucous makes that horrible taste in your mouth. I thought it was HORRIBLE! Luckily for me, that only lasted a few days but I do know how frustrating that can be. Two bites of anything and it went in the trash.