j/c...
My personal "wow, that's crazy" covid story.
I recently survived another bout with covid. First time (Thanksgiving '20) I lost my sense of taste and smell for weeks. After a couple of weeks, I joined a FB group and read the horror stories of many people who have never recovered and regained normal function. Or even worse, people whose senses had gone haywire: stories of coffee smelling like cat p*ss a year later, milk smells like laundry detergent, etc...
In my own experience, even after regaining taste, my sense of smell took quite a while to recover. Even after it returned, I would wake up one day (extending over months) and smell diesel fuel all day... at the beginning it would last for a few days, later, maybe just a few hours. I was pretty puzzled, if not intrigued, by the psychology behind it. I remember, a couple weeks into the first covid experience, my wife asked if I wanted Chik-fil-a... I thought "why, I won't taste it anyway". That day, I intently
imagined what it tasted like as I took each bite... ithe strategy seemed to work. I continued that practice at every meal and my senses returned in no time.
Fast-forward to this recent bout. About the time I was sure I had it, I remember stopping cold in my tracks and thinking "Whoooah, I better not lose my senses again!" I didn't... they became enhanced... Peeling an orange, the smell was literally overwhelming. The taste was nearly intoxicating -- way too much flavor. A couple days later, my wife was making coffee, I smelled the coffee from thirty feet away, but strangely, also smelled chocolate. "Why do I smell chocolate? Didn't you just make coffee??" She responded, "I don't know, oh wait, I
did just open the bag of Chips Ahoy?" No lie, I smelled the chocolate chips in the cookies from thirty feet away.
The keen sense of smell waned on about the same curve as the covid symptoms. Sadly, I "smell" like a mere mortal once again.
