To ask about covid sense of smell and taste loss

[WilsonMilson]

I know aibu isn’t really the place, but posting for traffic.

Got covid (for the first time, can’t believe I avoided it so long) over the festive season.
Very mild symptoms, have had worse colds, but on day 5 I lost my sense of smell and taste. Now a week on from that and still nothing. My sinuses feel weird too, dry and a bit blocked but no mucus.

It’s really freaking me out, I’m not usually an anxious person but I’m finding this sense loss very debilitating. Some things I can smell vaguely if I put my nose right up to them, but I’ve lost all transient smells in the air, can’t smell cleaning products or bleach at all and feel very cut off from everything, it is the oddest thing. I usually have a very keen sense of smell.

I keep testing it on strong smells and trying to retrain my senses with perfumes, coffee, menthol etc.

Taste wise I can differentiate sweet, salty and bitter tastes but that’s about the height of it.

Please no horror stories about it never returning as I can’t stand the thought of going on like this in perpetuity. Would like some hope and/or any tips.

My DH took about a month to get his smell back and another week for taste to return (or maybe the other way around, I can't remember exactly)

Some people take ages to get it back. A friend of mine went 6 months or so. However you can "train" it back. Google it.

Mine came back on its own with the latest bout of covid that I have had. It was completely gone, I couldn’t even taste or smell curry even slightly. It started to come back about 2 weeks later on its own and now 3 weeks on is completely back to normal.

I got my positive test on 19th Dec and haven't regained my smell yet. My taste is slowly coming back but not fully there.

A friend still can’t smell anything other than lemon 2 years on from having very mild covid.

My sense of smell returned after a week of having bad covid.

There are suggestions online for ways to help it return. None have worked for my friend, none were necessary for me. You could be anywhere between.

The worst thing about covid for me was the loss of smell and taste. All the other symptoms weren't too bad but luckily it came back after about a week.

Someone I work with still hasn't regained his sense of smell a year later though.

My sense of smell took around 6 months, taste a couple of weeks after that. But 2 years on a lot of things still taste wrong. My sister lost hers for less than 2 weeks. I have always been quite prone to losing my taste and smell when I have a cold anyway so wonder if that maybe has some effect on the longevity of it.

I got smell back relatively quickly although some toiletries smelt awful for quite a while.

I could taste salt and sweet throughout and can remember having a most delicious slice of pizza after about three weeks but at that stage a lot of things were OK for a couple of bites and then it would all tail off to nothing again.

Took six to eight weeks for everything to taste normal all the time.

Hope it comes back soon for you, OP. It was one of the worst things about it for me.

It took about a month for me. But it came back incrementally in that time, especially over the third and fourth weeks. A week out I was still getting DH to sniff-check if milk was off. Give it time.

Thanks for the responses so far. I keep reading horror tales of it never returning which seems inconceivable, they are literally 2 of your senses and to me are an essential part of enjoying life fully.

Given that just about everyone has had covid, and probably those who only lost it for short times are the ones unlikely to bother reporting it online, I’m hoping that there is a real bias to overrepresent those who have lost it long term, and in reality those unlucky people are a very very small number. I will keep telling myself that anyway.

I’m also hoping that the very vague whiffs I’m getting are a good sign that all is not lost and that it’s a matter of time and patience (I’m not a patient person at all).

I’m driving myself a bit mad testing my smell on everything. So depressing, had a bit of toast earlier and might as well have been munching cardboard. Need to get more imaginative with strong flavours and textures in the meantime I think. Honestly, I could cry and I’m not usually one for being so dramatic.

I dont think you can, there is no scientific basis for any of this. It comes back for some people, and for some of them that happens to be while doing this "retraining". I have tried everything, nothing works. I have friends who have tried everything too

I never got those symptoms at all- I did however develop lots of horrid neuro symptoms- even after a mild dose that have gone on and on

@Nimbostratus100 gosh that sounds awful. How do you cope? Have you gotten used to it? Can you smell and taste at ALL?
I’m finding it a bit nightmarish and the prospect it is permanent doesn’t bear thinking about.
I hope you get it back eventually, on the ‘Absent’ website they do suggest retraining and that it can take some months. I guess it doesn’t work for everyone, it seems highly variable.

@Crikeyalmighty what happened to you? It’s such an unpredictable virus, such variability in symptoms and durations.

Mine went for 3 weeks, taste too. Like you, OP, I was a bit panicked, but I read about the "sniff training " and did it religiously. Don't know if it helped or not, but it all started to come back after 10 days, then went again for a bit. It came and went until one day I walked into the bedroom and suddenly got a full face of the scent I had put on earlier, but couldn't smell! So good luck to you!

OP, I know the pain, I lost taste and smell for several weeks and it was the most strange sensation I've ever had and I was pretty depressed during that time.

There's lost of info out there on things that may help but the one thithat helped me was purposefully sniffing strong smells up close several times a day to try and stimulate the senses. I ended up buying a curry paste jar (pataks or similar) and opening it up and having a big sniff, alongside jars like pickles etc and did this 5/6 times a day. It wasn't much, but I could smell something after 2 weeks and it cheered me up knowing it was coming, even if day to day I couldn't notice anything.

Gradually, I started to smell, and then taste things again but it took months before my taste was truly back to normal - but the first step was getting up close and personal with smelly food to at least try and sense something!

I had it in April last year, my sense of taste came back fairly quickly but my sense of smell is only just returning

I had Covid in May and mine took a couple months to return. I had pretty much the same as you - I could distinguish salty, sweet, bitter, sour, but that was it. I felt like it came back in stages, if that makes sense, and the last stage was the marrying up of taste and smell. For a while it was like I could taste and I could smell, but didn't get the two together, which was weird, but I figured I could live with that if necessary.

A couple months after it came back I developed a bit of parosmia, where certain things suddenly smelled really off and weird. With some googling I found a research paper that suggested developing parosmia was actually a positive in the trajectory as it indicated I was still recovering.

I did do the smell training but have no idea if it helped. My doctor said that the research seems to be indicating that the loss is neurological rather than physical, which is why stimulating your brain to recognition is helpful.

I'm basically back to normal although still not loving coffee.

Hope yours returns soon!

In the nicest way, OP, I think you should step away from the internet a bit.

People who got Covid in the early days were in the dark, and had a genuinely frightening time not knowing what was going to happen from one day to the next. You’ve got it at a time when it’s not so unknown and frightening. The downside of that is that you can find lots of horror stories on the internet and you need to step away from them. It’s very early days in terms of smell and taste and it’s likely to improve soon. Sorry it seems so crap at the moment.

It doesn't work for everyone no. But during the lockdowns there was loads of information that for some people it helped to train the taste buds back into function through targeting certain flavours/ smells. Perhaps more as an acceleration or imporvement than a "fix".

@WilsonMilson I developed enormous back of the head daily headaches and a weird kind of head pressure of lightheaded ness- particularly if I turned my head or looked up or down -never had them before , plus a very heavy right 'buzzy' leg and extremely frequent pins and needles in both feet and occasionally fingers. Plus a real sensitivity to light or noise and weird internal kind of vibrations. It was all quite intermittent though, I would have odd days when I felt 'almost 'fine. . I've had bloods, chest x rays, seen the neurologist etc. only things they can find were very high blood pressure (enough to give you bad headaches ) and beta blockers have sorted that plus very high cholesterol - statins given to sort that but made pins and needles worse! I have changed to gluten free diet and lactose free dairy , plus supplements of magnesium and vit D (neurologist suggested these) . Gradually I seem to be improving although still getting some pins and needles but the heavy /numb leg thing is much better 4 months later . The osteopath does think I have some disc degeneration though so waiting on an MRI . It did seem to be though that covid triggered sending my nervous system into some kind of meltdown. I am 61 though- was convinced it was MS or something similar- neurologist (and a top private one) says my symptoms didn't match and onset at my age is apparently matched usually with more severe issues like falls , strength issues in hands and problems walking. Haven't had that at all .

Try not to panic too much yet. I did read quite a lot of horror stories about people not having it back for months and even years, but in RL I know no one who wouldn't have it back (probably someone will post now that all people they've known never had it back lol). It does happen, but I very much doubt it's of common occurrence.
I personally completely lost it for 5 days only (smell) and after getting whiffs of smell (coffee came back first) it returned back fully very fast.
Only one of the people I know lost it for 3 months.
I would say if you can smell something it's a good sign, generally!

Mine took 3-4 weeks to come back I think. It was very disconcerting and I was worried too. But it was all fine soon enough, luckily for me.
My DH just had muted or weird smell / taste, and his was better sooner than mine but hung around for a while on and off.

I found that although it felt like both smell and taste had gone, it was far more a smell thing. Though I think that had a similar effect. It was so weird frying onion and sausages or bacon or something, and getting no smell from it whatsoever. I found I could detect very spicy food, or very minty, or very citrussy. Try something like that - lime pickle maybe? My tongue seemed to be able to sense things, though the taste was missing. I also started choosing food by texture - crunchy toppings or nubbly food. Smooth stuff was totally wasted.

My sense of smell came back more or less fully about 6 months after I had covid. Weirdly my taste was only wrong for about 4 weeks. 18 months on I still have odd things happen with my sense of smell but it's really random. Sometimes I can't smell things that I could smell before, and I still have issues with some aftershave smelling like wee or sick 🤮. But again this is intermittent. None of this affects my day to day life other that being a bit odd. I'm sure you'll get your taste and smell back because most people do.

I think mine is pretty much back. I'm 3 or 4 weeks on now. It was alarming at the time though!