Well. We all hoped that my most recent Covid update would have been the end of my journey with Covid, and while I have now thankfully recovered from all of the 5 residual symptoms which I was left with when I wrote this post I do unfortunately now have a new one called parosmia.
Taken from the healthline website, 'parosmia is a term used to describe health conditions that distort your sense of smell. If you have parosmia, you may experience a loss of scent intensity, meaning you can’t detect the full range of the scents around you. Sometimes parosmia causes things you encounter every day to seem like they have a strong, disagreeable odour', and let me tell you, the latter of that statement is definitely what has happened to me. From further research, I have also learnt that parosmia is often experienced after you've recovered from an infection, and it's currently common in people 3 months after they've recovered from Covid, so this timeline makes sense with my experience. If I haven't said it outright on my blog before, just get your vaccine. I hated having Covid, and I hate this, too. More than half of the population has now had their Covid vaccine/s, so they are safe. Go get yours.
I first noticed that things started smelling/tasting a little strange on September 23rd but it wasn't that bad, and I didn't yet know what I was experiencing, except the vague thought that perhaps the beef in our fajitas was a little past its expiry date. Between then and now, more and more things started tasting foul, but it really came to a head on September 27th when Stephen was cooking a bolognese for dinner, and when I walked into the room, I was overwhelmingly disgusted by what I know now was caused by the smell of onions. We also now know that my sense of taste hasn't been affected per se, but as we know, sense of taste is largely affected by what you can or can't smell. I managed to make it through dinner that night by holding my nose, but we've now stopped cooking with onions all together so that I don't have to do that, because as you can imagine, it's not that fun. I have also sniffed everything in the flat and we've worked out that my main enemies are currently onions, garlic, celery, chicken, tuna, chocolate, toothpaste, (WHY?), and certain spices like rosemary and paprika.
I have to tell you that it is a real problem because even though that sounds like a very small list of offensive ingredients, the amount of food we eat that includes some variety of onion/garlic powder is absolutely shocking - it's in food that I've never even tasted it in before, but it's there, and it's now horrific for me.
An article by the University of Utah says the following on Covid-19 induced parosmia: 'It’s not known exactly why COVID-19 leads to parosmia. It’s believed most people who experience this symptom also experienced a loss of taste and smell while they were sick. It’s also unknown how long it lasts. One study suggests the condition can last up to six months, but the average duration is around three months.' Another study also says that parosmia after COVID-19 is 'a sign that your olfactory system (sense of smell) may be recovering.', so that's good news. I was someone who lost both of sense of taste and smell entirely while I had COVID, and while my sense of taste returned within a week, I would say that about 20% of my sense of smell hadn't yet returned, and I think it's that little bit that I hadn't yet recovered which is trying to come back now, but it's struggling with it and is causing parosmia instead. Unfortunately, I wasn't consulted with when my sense of smell decided to fight to come back, instead of just letting it be. I was okay with only having 80% of it back, and not having to deal with this, but alas.
I am very much hoping that this won't be my experience forever, as it is such a frustrating and anxiety-inducing experience as a lot of articles suggest. There were some days last week where I felt totally put off by food all together, not because they smelled awful to me, but because I was fearful that they could. I don't have much in the way of advice on this topic, so if anyone has had a similar experience and has advice, I would love to hear it.
Please keep your fingers crossed for me that this passes as quickly as it appeared!
xo
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