Hello @jasonallen Welcome to Connect and the Head and Neck group. Here you are, a hard-working guy making the best of life and then you get hit with cancer. No cancer is good but throat cancer just messes with everyday living. Eating, talking, even breathing is hard when you are recovering from the physical abuse of radiation to the throat. Hopefully you are on the mend although I am sure it is a slow mend.
Radiation is like being cooked from the inside out. It will take a long time to heal inside. Months and likely a couple of years before things level out and we learn to deal with what damage remains. Churchill said "If you're going through hell, keep going". I say just take it one day at a time and measure progress by the month rather than day to day. Tomorrow might be worse than today yet next month likely will be better than this month. For me this was was hardest fight I ever had and I'm a Vietnam and Cold War vet. Tough times never last but tough people do.
Ask anything you want. Keep me posted of your progress. I want you to fight. One question, did you have surgery prior to rad and Chemo?

@jasonallen , hang in there my friend!
It took me nearly a year before I could eat and then oatmeal was my 3 meals a day for a year!
Eating and liquids are still a problem for the past 8 1/2 years.
You will be assigned to a speech therapist but as for me she was a waste of time and money so I stopped seeing her!
I found that my throat wasn’t going to cooperate until it was ready so I decided not to push it.
When you sip water try tipping your head forward before you swallow and do the same for ingesting your meds…I know, we were taught to tip our head back to swallow a pill when we were kids but tipping forward is what helped me.
If you’re experiencing the smell of food, even toast making you want to vomit, it’s normal. It took several months for me to tolerate the smell of any food.
Wishing you the best

MOJO

@jaysonallen, I thought I'd check in. How are you doing?