I’m a couple of days done with my Paxlovid rebound case of Covid. The rebound phase really punched me in the nose, so to speak. I haven’t been so badly clogged in many years.
But I’m done with it, except for a bit of residual snottiness, and am well enough to mask up and do some grocery shopping today.
However, I have totally lost my sense of smell. I can vaguely taste sweet/salty/bitter/sour, but that’s it. I can’t smell a thing. I’ve tried putting my nose into our cannister of freshly-ground coffee, smelling some crushed lavender buds, crushing a garlic clove and holding it close to my nose: nothing.
I’m reading that most people get their sense of smell back eventually. Does anyone have any hopeful experiences to relate? If mine is gone for good, that’s going to be bad news. It’s my hobby to go to ethnic mom-n-pop restaurants, the more exotic, the better. And I like to try to duplicate recipes in my kitchen from these places, as I’ve been an enthusiastic cook since I was a kid. All this might be gone forever, if Szechuan cooking tastes no different from soda crackers and water to me.
I was very close to asymptomatic, and then my taste buds just vanished.
After about a week it came back with no fanfare whatsoever, like a housecat who shows up after being lost for a week and immediately goes to sleep on a pile of laundry.
I ordered Indian food from my favorite restaurant and happily wept into my vindaloo.
My sister’s sense of taste was nearly completely gone for 18 months, she got it back in 2020. It has gradually come back but still isn’t 100% almost 4 years later.
Mine was never completely gone, but it made food taste weird for a while. I used even more salt than usual. It came back slowly over the course of several weeks.
The first time I had Covid, almost exactly two years ago, it was like a mild cold, except I completely and utterly lost my sense of smell. It eventually came back 100% after 2-3 weeks.
The second time I had Covid, a month or so ago, was again like a mild cold, and I only lost my sense of smell for a day or two, and it’s back 100% again.
Mrs. Solost and my sister have both said that they didn’t get their sense of smell back 100% after Covid. But I think they mostly got it back. At least enough to still enjoy food.
I have no idea if it actually works, but I’ve heard that people have attempted to get their sense of smell back by ‘smell training’, attempting to smell things that have a strong smell in order to retrain the olfactory nerves. So, pretty much what you’re already doing-- trying to smell crushed garlic, coffee, stuff like that.
Near the end of my bout is when I lost my sense of taste & smell. It was almost completely gone for two weeks and then gradually came back over the next few weeks.
I’m getting over COVID too. My main symptom was sinus pressure headache (from HELL) and some congestion. From the beginning, I lost the ability to taste all but the strongest flavors and my sense of smell was compromised. It made for some really weird dining experiences.
I am maybe five days symptom-free and I’m near 100% recovered in both.
My COVID was asymptomatic, – found out about it when I had to go to the ER for something unrelated, they tested for it because I hadn’t had a test recently, and ended up giving me a shot for it – but if it’s any consolation, my sense of smell hasn’t worked right in almost fifty years.
I got COVID about a year and a half ago, and I never fully lost my sense of taste and smell; it just was very… muted(?). I mean, I could taste and smell stuff, but nothing was very strong or tasted/smelled quite right.
It came back after a little less than a week as good as new.
I lost sense of smell for about two weeks. What I found disconcerting was that it’s not like having a cold and you’re stuffed up. You’re breathing freely, yet there’s no smell. It’s weird.
To track the recovery I lined up all my spices to see what would come back first. Turned out the first thing I could register was soy sauce. Then the rest came back over a period of days.
My most recent bout was mild and asymptomatic, and I haven’t noticed anything with regards to smell or taste.
The first time I got Covid (confirmed, at least) was in late summer of 2022, and I don’t remember any issues with smell, although my sinuses have been blocked to some degree or another since (looks at watch) sometime in the mid-90s so I’m not the best person to track that. That said, I did notice that for three or four weeks after infection (no Paxlovid for me, just isolation and bedrest) most food just tasted kind of…blah. Kinda lost some of the urge to eat, honestly. But after a month or so I was pretty much right as rain.
I read an article about this that explains that typical loss of smell or taste during an upper respiratory illness comes from just being stuffed up. Whereas COVID actually attacks and destroys taste and smell receptors. So it’s a different mechanism creating the same effect. And is why some people take a long time to recover.
And yes, it’s weird. I had never lost taste or smell before in my life.
Losing your taste and smell is not unique to Covid. I know a couple of people who had infections and lost it years ago. One never got it back. The difference is it’s usually a very rare possible symptom. With Covid it’s been relatively common.
The OP is unlucky because I’ve read some articles that say with the more recent variants it’s become a much more rare symptom.
The first time I had Covid I knew I had it but didn’t lose my senses right away. Then one day I lost it between breakfast and lunch. I could barely detect my hottest hot sauce when I practically snorted it. I only ate the spiciest food I could get my hands on for awhile. I did get better. My taste is mostly normal although I think it’s muted. Some subtle flavors are lost on me. My sense of smell is definitely not as good as it used to be. At least I have problems smelling bad smells so that’s a plus.
I can’t figure out what variant I had, because my understanding was that the new variant making the rounds around here involved fantastically bad headaches, but not so much the losing of taste or smell. I had both.
The one I had right before Christmas was just like a bad cold. The worst part is a bad cough I can’t get rid of. I’m on a steroid now to get rid of it.
I had covid for sure in January 2022. I’ve been sick a couple of times since but at-home tests have been negative for the 'rona so I’m going with the one infection almost exactly 2 years ago being my only one.
I lost my sense of taste and it was like a light switch getting flipped: lunch was fine, by mid afternoon I couldn’t taste a damn thing. That lasted for a few days then sloooooooooowly returned over the course of a few weeks IIRC. However, it suffered what I fear is some permanent changes. Previous to covid I was very sensitive to the taste of salt: if I could detect any salt whatsoever in food I wanted nothing to do with it. Now, I salt stuff like a normal American – indeed, I just bought a nice Le Creuset salt grinder. Previously I would have been horrified at the thought of spending money on such a thing.
I also used to love spicy food and actually grew my own face-melting peppers: ghost peppers, scorpion peppers, the whole bunch. I dried them after letting them get good and hot (the trick is to stop watering well before harvest so as to stress the plants), ground them into a powder, and sprinkled the resulting concoction onto everything that black pepper normally goes on and a whole lot it doesn’t. It was absolutely divine on pizza, for instance.
Now, restaurant salsa and black pepper are both too hot for me. The thought of eating a scorpion pepper makes me gag.
Since I was so congested when I was sick I have no idea what it did to my sense of smell at the time, but I’ve noticed since then that my sense of smell is wonky. Some things, like body odor, I can’t smell (I spend all day in a room with teenagers so maybe this is a good thing?). Most cooking I can smell, but fresh flowers I have a difficult time smelling, which sucks mightily.