Things I Have Been Asked Since Having Covid

Back in October [2021] we unknowingly came down with the VID, Rona, or as it’s scientifically called, Coronavirus; Covid-19. It was a weird series of events to be honest. My husband had a doctor’s appointment for his foot, but was having minor sinus symptoms. I knew that they would require him to show proof he was negative for Covid to be able to go to that appointment. I made him a drive thru appointment to get tested just to have for his appointment. We went, they shoved a long qtip up to his skull, and 30 minutes later we had his result……positive. Totally wasn’t expecting it. 4 days later, I was having similar symptoms and took an at home test, negative. That afternoon I did it again, positive. By day 5 I had lost my smell and taste senses.

When we finally got through the 2 weeks of quarantine and made our way back into society, I started getting a lot of questions from people. It has been about 3.5 months since the positive test and I still cannot fully taste or smell. I was thinking about it last night and wondering if I will ever get it back. During my thought processes, I was recalling all the questions I have been asked and decided to write it down and obviously post it here.

Questions I Have Been Asked Since Having Covid

1. Can you really not taste or smell anything?

Up until about a month ago, yes I couldn’t smell anything at all. It is bitter sweet for me. I don’t miss people’s odors and certain bad smells, but then on the flip side I can’t even smell a candle. It has been a challenge especially with my youngest still in diapers when I can’t smell the poopy ones. I still cannot smell much but sometimes I get a whiff of things, usually fart-like smells and most recently a hint of the scented trash bag smell (like a dryer sheets linen smell). Oh I did smell popcorn the other day when it was popping in the microwave. Even then, it is very faint to me.

As for taste, I still cannot taste flavors of things at all. I can tell if something is sour, salty, or spicy but not actually tasting it. Makes me wonder if what I am cooking is actually good or not, I have to ask people to let me know. I have been adding hot sauce to things just to give myself some excitement on the tongue. It’s pretty frustrating when I am a lover of food and trying new things all the time. It is very frustrating at restaurants too. But at the same time, I am past the getting mad about it phase.

2. Since you can’t taste do you still have cravings?

At first, no. I actually had zero appetite at all and literally had to set an alarm to remind myself to eat something. At some point though, I noticed I was having cravings again. Mostly during “that time of the month” wanting those salty sweet num-nums. I even had Chris buy me brownies and some other things to satisfy the cravings, but without being able to taste it, it didn’t do anything for me. Psychologically though, cravings don’t last long. Usually after 20 minutes it goes away. But, having that “itch you can’t scratch” can be frustrating sometimes.

Going off of that, usually food smells can make people salivate. I don’t have that anymore. I actually couldn’t even tell that the chicken was going bad until my oldest son and then husband said something smelled terrible (it looked fine to me, but into the garbage it went).

3. Have you lost weight since you can’t taste anything? [“I wouldn’t want to eat if I couldn’t taste”].

The urge to eat is still there, it is survival after all. I haven’t lost weight because of it.

4. How did you manage the house with both of you down and 3 kids?

In short, we did our best. Chris really only had 2 days of misery. I had the full 2 weeks of misery and was lucky his job was still paying for time missed because of Rona. He was able to do most of the things for the kids, masked of course, while I was down and vice-versa. To our knowledge, the kids never got it. We constantly sanitized everything. We tried to keep as much distance as we could staying in our own rooms most of the time. We just did our best.

5. Do you know where you got it from?

Nope. No idea. It could have been anywhere from the store, Chris’ job, perhaps the kid’s got it at school..who knows.

6. If you can’t smell, do you still have reactions to toxic things?

This one has been really weird actually. I have always been super sensitive to cigarette smells. It typically gives me an instant migraine. I cannot smell cigarettes at all now. Even the butts that were accidentally left in our garage didn’t get noticed because I couldn’t smell them. Normally it would bother me A LOT. But then there are times when I am cleaning and using my cleaners and I will still sneeze or cough as if I have smelled it, even though I don’t smell anything at all. It is really strange.  I don’t smell gasoline at the gas pump either.

7. Do you have any other long lasting symptoms?

Thankfully no. It took me a solid month to get back to my normal functioning. It was rough, but here I am.

It is fascinating to me how the body does things and how things can alter us. Hopefully one day I will get my senses back fully, but now I am wondering if that will be overwhelming or cause migraines like cigarettes did before. Only time will tell I suppose.