Hello hive mind ! Please help ! I had a large subarachnoid haemorrhage middle of oct, resulting in 4 weeks in hospital. No hemiplegia but all the other after effects: fatique , memory, some speech, hypersensitive to noise problems. At first i lost my smell and taste but it came back fine. 4 weeks ago everything started tasting funny, like fermented fruit , or mince pies as i call it. When i say everything , i mean everything, even water, strong tasting foods the lot. The taste is there all the time. Things smell like this too. My gp has suggested retraining smell exercises , which make sense. Has anyybody done this? He gave me two sites to look at; ascent and fifth sense . Id love to hear if anyone has done this
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Hi @Lala61 & welcome to the community. Sorry to hear of your stroke but I hope you find this a useful place to be. I’m sure others will be along to say hi too.
A lot of us find that food tastes different after a stroke. I know some things I found really vile. I’ve attached a couple of links below to a couple of threads where this has been raised before.
A lot of retraining is about keeping eating & in time things will start to improve.
Mine settled over time but occasionally returns but does settle again.
Hopefully that will be the same for you too.
Best wishes
Ann
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Hello @Lala61
Welcome to the community.
Wishing you all the best on your recovery path.
You will find many useful pieces of information and advice on this forum.
Takes care.
Namaste|
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My husband has lost quite a bit of weight since his stroke at end of Nov. He says all food and drink has a horrible taste.
I take in things that I think he might like but nothing suited him. The other day lunch was a cheese omelette and he actually said it tasted OK. I took in some strawberries, blueberries and red grapes which he had afterwards and he said they were nice so maybe we are getting somewhere. We spoke to the dietician but she wasn’t much help unfortunately.
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Hi @Lala61 welcome to the forum.
The short answer is as @Mrs5K says, the retraining is just in just keep eating regardless. That’s all I did as it was the least of my concerns at the time, I was more bothered about not being able to communicate.
The weight loss is due to the inactivity; there’s an awful lot of muscle wastage as a result. I lost 3st in the first year but thankfully I’ve now managed to build all that back up again as I’ve become more mobile and done a lot of strength traing at the gym. I’m 4yrs post post stroke.
His taste will likely come back in the next 6mths as the brain heals and repairs, just as mine did. Just tell him he needs to keeping eating regardless, recovery will be harder on him if he doesn’t, because the brain needs a lot of fuel for energy to make to make those repairs, just as recovery from any other major trauma does. He shouldn’t starve his brain of the vital fuel that it needs, just as a car can’t run on fumes, neither can his brain.
Lorraine
Stroke Improvement Group
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Lala61 sorry I jumped in on your post! Just getting used to the forum. Hope your taste comes back soon.
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@Trisha2 oh you don’t need to aplogise. All contributions on all posts are welcome. It sounds like your husbands taste is improving which is great & will make a massive difference to him & his food intake.
Best wishes
Ann
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Hi @Trisha2 - it does look as though you are getting somewhere. You’ve got something to build on with the cheese omelette and the berries and grapes. Keep adding stuff and as @EmeraldEyes and @Mrs5K say your husband’s taste will return. In the meantime, he must keep eating to supply the energy the brain needs to recover.
It may be worth asking the dietician for further help. Sometimes if you follow-up and give them a lead e.g. explain the positives about the omelette and berries they might be able to add to that.
We have been really lucky as our dietician has been a god-send.
Wishing you all the best.
Namaste|
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