Nancy, I'm 10 months post and my experience was somewhat extreme, so take what I say as something of worst case. I'm not a doctor, I'm a patient like you, but I can suggest that the feeling something may be caught in the back of throat may be a result of nerve trauma or swelling around the nerves resulting in problems with your autonomic swallowing. The way I understand my situation is that the smooth muscles involved in pharyngeal and esophageal swallowing are not working much at all for me. So what happens is that the normal "flow" of mucous protecting these passages just kinds of stops and I have to spit or cough it out.
Possibly, you have a lesser version of this and the mucous just kinds sticks noticeably. Again, I am not a doctor, but this what I understand to be my situation, which does seem to be improving a bit.
As for taste, I could taste very little the first weeks post. Salty and savory tastes came back in just a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I can taste precious little in the way of sugars. Tonight I was ate a small Butterfinger and could at least taste that it was in fact a Butterfinger. That was a small slice of heaven....I still can't taste a Snickers bar.
This past weekend I made barbecue. I was so busy cooking and multi-tasking, I forgot about my taste limitations altogether. When we sat down to eat, my wife told me it was almost to sweet to eat. On a scale of 0 - bland to 10 - a spoonful of raw sugar, she said it was a 7.
I echo Jim's advice and suggest you talk to your doctor about it. Fortunately, these things seem to pass. At least I hope so....I miss chocolate.
I hope this helps,
Tod
