Still can’t smell anything!

[Mannymoomin]

Just wondering if anyone is still suffering with no sense of smell after COVID?
I had it in the delta wave… around 17 months ago now.
I still can’t smell anything, absolutely bugger all, I’ve resigned myself to thinking it’s not coming back as it’s been so long, but has anyone had it come back after such a long length of time.
I’ve been practicing with the smell memory, smelling different things everyday, coffee, cinnamon, mint, perfume, Dh farts 😂 , but I can’t remember what they smell like anymore… so 🤷‍♀️

I had it just over a year ago. I would say I have about 10-20% of my smell back on a good day. Some days I can smell things, other days nothing.
I went through a phase where I could smell burning constantly, I'd wake up thinking the house was on fire. It was horrible.

I had Covid in Jan and didn't lose it. Had some other evil cold thing in June - tested most days and all negative - and since then I can't smell. To the point of sitting next to a full litter tray and can't smell it. It's really odd. Occasionally I get a whiff of something but that's it.

Bloody hell, 17 months must be awful! DS1 had it very early on and it was around 3 months until he got smell and taste back but ever since he gets occasional phantom smells "like a dirty pond". He can't bear eggs, bell peppers, or celery since either, says they taste 100x stronger than they did before covid. And strangely his cousin has had the exact same thing with eggs!

My DD had the burning smells too, she’s now regained her smell.
I haven’t even had phantom smells, a whiff of vix and I can feel it, but there’s just no smell whatsoever.
I’m at the point where I crave sniffing something awful!

Thankfully my taste isn’t affected and never was.
Weirdly my household got COVID for the second time in January, apart from me!
But yes it’s been ages and I’m really missing it, I’ve even had to change the gas hob to induction because I was worrying about not being able to smell it if it got accidentally knocked.

I got covid October 2020. Total loss of sense of smell (not taste). Nothing for a year except awful burning smell if anywhere near coffee. Burning smell then represented all strong smells - constantly having to have it 'translated' for me. So, if I knew there was a smell then someone would say it was hot dogs, for example, and I would try and impose my memory of a hot dog smell on it. Didn't work. Today I think most of the sense is back though. The burning smell has gone (with the exception of coffee). Last smells to return have been sweat and smelly feet so that is useful on a personal hygiene front. Still can't really smell toilets or toilet-related smells, so that is a positive I suppose! I can smell more now than I could at 17 months post covid so it may still come back.

Good luck with it. Until it happened to me I had no idea how unsettling it could be.

An interesting thing about a year post covid was that a colleague put some perfume on my wrist as she thought it was mad I couldn't smell it at all. There was nothing there so far as I could tell. However, within two hours the smell was so toxic for me and so overpowering I had to scrub my wrist for ages. This happened with some artificial scents as the sense was returning.

@bumbletoes that is definitely reassuring.

Im forever spraying deodorant and brushing my teeth because I’m paranoid that I stink and people will be to polite to tell me.
Also forever asking my dc to make sure I don’t smell offensive, because they don’t really care if they offend me.

My GP doesn’t really have a clue, he did offer to refer me to long covid clinic, but I thought it would be rather pointless since there’s no known way of getting smell back.

You're right though, it’s really one of those things that is hard to understand until it happens to you.

My sense of smell was gone for about a year from may 2020 Finally started coming back but has never come back fully. It's duller if that makes sense I can't smell a lot of mild smells still.
Now I have Covid again It's even more all but hasn't gone completely, fingers crossed it doesn't. I keep having a sniff of the Vicks jar. Usually makes me me say Wow, now it's a milder smell.