The Taste

   Each person who goes through chemotherapy can experience similar side effects, but no two journeys are the same.  There are reasons for this of course.  They may include (but are not limited to) the following facts:

• each person is different and therefore will react to the medications differently;
• each set of drugs used is different based on the type of cancer, the location of the cancer, and the severity of the cancer;
• the amounts of drugs used are different;
• there are different intervals of time between the doses for different people;
• each of us has a different threshold to pain and discomfort.

   It makes no sense to compare how one person reacts to chemo with how another reacts because each of us understands that the journey is most important, not the comparisons.  But one fairly common side effect that is difficult to quantify but is nonetheless a real bother is the taste of chemotherapy.  How does one describe this?

   Chemotherapy has "The Taste."  It is nasty.  Some use the word "metallic" when describing it. Others say "tinny."  Those adjectives attempt to capture the idea but the pervasiveness of that taste is what is bothersome to me.  I go to sleep with that taste in my mouth, I wake up with that taste.  Ginger candy makes it go away for five or ten minutes.  Lemon candy does the same. Brushing teeth and using mouthwash has no real lasting effect. Not only is the taste itself unsettling, but then of course everything one tries to eat or drink tastes like "The Taste." In the interest of education, allow me to attempt to explain this phenomenon to those of you who don't have any experience. 

   

   Chemotherapy tastes a bit like this: Imagine that you are walking along the road.  You find a penny in the gutter.  This excites you because you like pennies, so you put it in your mouth and start sucking on it.  A little further along your walk you find another penny in a mud puddle.  You clean it up a bit and throw that in your mouth as well.  You find another penny on the locker room floor at the health club and, sure enough, into the mouth it goes.  You see a penny left in the mechanical horse at Meijer and since you are currently collecting pennies, you take it out of the machine and add that to your oral collection. And don't forget to notice that penny that has been stuck to the carpet under your car's front seat for the last three or four years.  Peel that one up and pop it in as well.  Eventually you find twenty-five to thirty pennies during the course of your day and they are now all in your mouth.  Then they stay there -- overnight -- while you sleep (I know you could choke, but that is not a part of my metaphor so don't bother me with those kinds of anatomical details).  When you wake up, the pennies are all still there (I told you you wouldn't choke) and the taste doesn't leave.  

   There.  It's a little like that.  I just thought you ought to know.  Public service announcements are helpful for the education of the masses, even when they are not offered in good taste.  But you received this information for free.  You are welcome. Consider yourself enlightened.