Two momentous things happened yesterday in my post-cancer recovery.

Despite a fair amount of fear and apprehension, I went to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned and it wasn't so bad.

My oral hygienist, Nancye, who in late November appropriately postponed my cleaning due to chemotherapy issues, used a sonic cleaner with warm water that made the whole experience much easier.

I swallowed the warm water with no problem at all, which gave me the inspiration to try to eat food last night. I have been unable — due to a ravaged throat — to eat food through my mouth since Dec. 8.

So for the last two months and five days I've been eating Ensure, a liquid protein milkshake about six times a day through my stomach tube. My wife pumps it in me and I only taste it when I burp.

I don't particularly get hungry and this tube thing isn't very satisfying. But I continue to breathe and do other regular bodily functions.

Speaking of which, I was a little curious how having nothing but a liquid diet could result in what the medical profession calls bowel movements. The less educated call them poop or tinkies.

So I asked my chiropractor friend and golfing buddy, Stuart Sultze. He essentially didn't know. So I told him I would ask a real doctor. (I've been waiting for years to use that line on him).

I asked my nurse, Doris, at the cancer center. She said that Ensure has a lot of fiber and that my body naturally sucks out the liquid, leaving a solid substance. The medical profession calls those bowel movements.

I've long wondered why they don't call them intestine movements. Well it turns out that's what a bowel is. (I just looked this up in a dictionary for the first time in my life).

Moving right along, I decided last night that if warm water went down well, maybe food would. My wife was cutting up one of these cooked chickens we get from Vons and I tried eating a few bites.

They were little bites but they went down pretty well. No searing pain.

She put these previously cooked chicken pieces in this mixture of noodles, cheese, corn and black beans. And then cooked all that together.

When it was done, I put a little of it in a bowl and cut up everything into baby bites and put it in the left side of my mouth.  The right side of my tongue was hurting.

So I chewed up this delicious mix and down the hatch it went. And it didn't hurt. Cool.

With my tongue hurting and all, and my throat still a little raw, I'm not piling food into my hatch at any significant clip. In fact, I've had 4 cans of Ensure today.

But I will eat more and I am absolutely delighted that I'm able to taste it and it tastes good. (Previous columns have noted that eight weeks of radiation to my throat was not only transforming my throat into a war zone, but killing taste buds.)

Obviously, my little taste buds are fighting back with new growth. Just like some of my hair is coming back on both my head and other places I'll spare you from describing. (Not sure why; I was pretty open about those bowel things.)

My beard and mustache growth is still way behind. I've exposed a lot of my chin which I tried to hide since 1974 with my beard. Radiation made me look like a cancer patient.

I won't be completely cured until my beard rivals George Clooney's. Then, I presume, I will be fully loved like he is.