No social eating?

HNC patients suffer from unique challenges, as much of social functioning depends on the structural and functional integrity of the head and neck region.

Wiley Online Library

To put it simply, social isolation sucks and head and neck cancer patients are at risk. I’m an introvert and enjoy my own company but I need other people.

The inability to eat is one of the unfortunate “sequelae” of head and neck cancer treatment. I’d like the world to know that it might look as if a person can eat but if the internal structures in the mouth and throat have been damaged, they will have a lot of trouble.

If you can’t eat in public, social life has limits. You can’t enjoy dinner at a restaurant or with friends and family. You can’t really enjoy Christmas and other celebrations.

I have limited eating options so I try to make up for it by drinking lots of coffee and tea when I’m out. I have often “dined out” on a couple of cups of tea, which take me a while to drink, while others feast on a buffet. Obviously I avoid such events if possible.

I have a severed facial nerve and dribble when I eat. I can’t bite and chew but can process food a little bit. Trouble is it’s very messy and there’s no pleasure in it at all when I’m with other people unless it’s something like ice cream or tiramisu or pavlova. Even then the messiness is hard to contend with (not impossible) and it’s easier to eat by myself at home – without my dental plate in! And I get sick of sweet stuff …

I often dream that one day I’ll learn the trick of eating without dribbling in spite of my severed nerve but after six years it’s not going to happen.

In spite of my enjoyment of solitude I’m still scared of being isolated. There is a difference. I’ve had to work around my eating problem by lots of volunteering and offering to do newsletters and serve on committees. That way I have built up a face to face and online collection of friends. I suppose you could say I’ve had to try harder to find a social niche than ever before. Ironically, I might have benefited from it in some weird kind of way. The introvert has gained some extrovert qualities.

It’s a hard road though and there are people worse off than me, one of life’s true cliches. We get so used to not being able to eat normally that we stop missing it. We adapt. Many of us have become coffee connoisseurs: flat whites, cappucinos, affrogatos, dirty chai lattes, you name it. Coffee in a cafe is doable for most and you get that sense of being with people, being out there like a normal person.

The quotation at the top of the story is from this wordy but insightful article.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hed.26235