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.

It's been two weeks since I had my last zapping or radiation for my throat cancer.  When I went to the doctor, he looked down my mouth and said, "It's still red in there."

Dr. Dean Davis also explained that radiation continues to work its magic (or destruction) for four days after each treatment. So it's really been just over a week that the healing began.

Funny, after eight weeks of radiation, I'm not healing with the speed of light.

In fact, for the first week my throat was as raw as, literally, an open wound, and every time I swallowed (which as it turns out you do quite a bit during the day), it hurt.

I am still eating through my stomach tube (6 cans of vanilla milkshake Ensure a day).

I mentioned to the doctor that when I burp, I can taste the vanilla.

He was a little surprised at that. Not that I can burp. But that I can taste the vanilla.

Radiation generally wipes out your taste buds. You have five kinds — sweet, sour, bitter, salty and glutamic acid.  The latter one is what makes steaks taste good.

You start out with 10,000 taste buds. By the time you're an older adult, you're left with about 5,000.

After eight weeks of radiation around your tongue, you pretty much don't have any. They have to grow back.

Sweet is one of the last to grow back so that's why the good doctor was surprised when I said I could taste the vanilla.

I don't know if that's a good sign or not. It may be a couple weeks before my throat is well enough to let food pass by without igniting a firestorm in my mouth.

But I will let you know as soon as I do whether some of my favorite foods have any taste at all.

Of course, one of those foods is pizza. But it turns out the dough expands as it goes over the throat and that just might not be a good idea for awhile.

The doctor suggested I start with milk and work my way up to ice cream. I know I won't be having Doritos during the Super Bowl.

My tongue, by the way, still hurts. And this has prevented me from talking a lot. Many see that as a good thing.

I also can't cackle. Before, I could cackle with the best of them. But the newsroom has been eerily silent of my cackling for about four months now. Some have missed that.

The rest of my body is doing reasonably well. My head is relatively clear — not fatigued fuzzy as it has been. This has allowed me to return to work for five to seven hours a day.

I have just begun to wake up as early as 8 a.m. That's an hour or two improvement over recent weeks. My work day used to begin at 6 a.m. but that's still down the road.

I have enough energy to play 18 holes of golf with an electric cart. My game has gone to pot. I haven't broken 80 since September and I've been shooting in the 80s or 90 or 91.

Last Saturday, I had a $3 bet with my alleged buddy, Stuart Sultze. In the previous week, I shot an 86 and he had an 85. Well I shot another 86 but he shot a 72. I felt violated.

I'm going to lay off betting for awhile. I want my throat and my irons to be up to par.