My family got Covid in March. I had very mild symptoms, easily confused with springtime allergies. My wife ended up with pneumonia and was almost hospitalized. One child got bronchitis. Another had mild symptoms.
I didn't notice it much at the time, but my sense of smell had changed. It's now October as I write this and I haven't recovered. In fact I would say it has gotten worse.
I'm trying to think of how to describe it, because it's not as simple as saying I can't smell things. There are things that I used to be able to smell with a lot of nuance in flavor, like ripe fruits, wines, cheese varieties, and so on. Now, the nuance is gone. The hint of the smell is there, and for things that I used to eat often, I still have the memory of the smell and taste. Because I'm unable to smell other things, it makes me wonder if I am actually smelling things, or if my mind is telling me that the thing I am eating has a familiar taste, like a phantom smell sensation.
Because of this, I now have a strong preference for very spicy foods and other strong flavors, because it's the only time I ever really taste something.
I am also in the camp of people who have lost the ability to smell certain things, even toxic things. I can't smell cleaning products that contain chlorine-based bleach, for example. I don't notice certain other funky smells that I would normally find repulsive. When the city was blanketed in smoke here in Seattle for a week, I barely noticed the smell. It was there, but only faintly.
The strange part to me is that some smells have fundamentally changed. When I am outside and working in our garden, the smell of soil is now profound. Wet, woody material has a very strong scent. It got me wondering if there was some evolutionary advantage the virus was selecting for, like it was giving me the smelling abilities of some woodland creature. I know that's stupid. That's just where my Covid brain has gone.
The observer in me wants to run experiments to try to document the experience. The pragmatist would prefer to drink a stout beer and eat a BBQ burger with Gorgonzola cheese and pickled jalapeños.
That's crazy, I'm so sorry you haven't regained your senses the way they were.
My friend is experiencing exactly the same results many months after having Covid. Doctor prescribed steroids for him which made it better for a brief period of time but then it regressed.
I, on the other hand, lost my smell for about 4 weeks after which it mostly came back to normal.
I just don't understand why no one is talking about this, as it seems like quite a lot of people have had permanent changes to their smell and this is just absolutely terrifying.
My father lost his sense of taste from eating poison ivy as a dare as a child (his older brothers basically tricked him into it). Similarly, he LOVED spicy and extremely salty foods because those were the only things he could taste. I grew up loving over-salted food because that was the way my family cooked.
I didn't notice it much at the time, but my sense of smell had changed. It's now October as I write this and I haven't recovered. In fact I would say it has gotten worse.
I'm trying to think of how to describe it, because it's not as simple as saying I can't smell things. There are things that I used to be able to smell with a lot of nuance in flavor, like ripe fruits, wines, cheese varieties, and so on. Now, the nuance is gone. The hint of the smell is there, and for things that I used to eat often, I still have the memory of the smell and taste. Because I'm unable to smell other things, it makes me wonder if I am actually smelling things, or if my mind is telling me that the thing I am eating has a familiar taste, like a phantom smell sensation.
Because of this, I now have a strong preference for very spicy foods and other strong flavors, because it's the only time I ever really taste something.
I am also in the camp of people who have lost the ability to smell certain things, even toxic things. I can't smell cleaning products that contain chlorine-based bleach, for example. I don't notice certain other funky smells that I would normally find repulsive. When the city was blanketed in smoke here in Seattle for a week, I barely noticed the smell. It was there, but only faintly.
The strange part to me is that some smells have fundamentally changed. When I am outside and working in our garden, the smell of soil is now profound. Wet, woody material has a very strong scent. It got me wondering if there was some evolutionary advantage the virus was selecting for, like it was giving me the smelling abilities of some woodland creature. I know that's stupid. That's just where my Covid brain has gone.
The observer in me wants to run experiments to try to document the experience. The pragmatist would prefer to drink a stout beer and eat a BBQ burger with Gorgonzola cheese and pickled jalapeños.