sooo i’ve been really inactive on here... here’s why
i tested positive for covid in the beginning of january and was on bed rest pretty much the entire month and a few days into february until i recovered. since then, i’ve been dealing with so many different health problems that apparently are the aftermath of covid.
the worse of these is parosmia. i’ve only been experiencing it for a few weeks—about two and a half months after i recovered from covid—but it’s gotten really bad ever since i got the first dose of the pfizer vaccine yesterday. i can’t eat or drink anything but water without gagging because everything smells horrible. absolutely rancid. like something between death and a sewage system.
parosmia is basically an olfactory sense (sense of smell) disorder that happens after the olfactory neurons have been damaged for some reason, often due to a viral infection—in my case, covid. damage to these neurons result in changes in the way smells are relayed to the brain.
basically, everything smells rotten to me. and it tastes that way too.
i’ve been smelling a bad odor for weeks now, but it’s never affected my eating habits. now, the only things i can keep down are water, oat milk, and sushi if i try hard. things like meat, chicken, warm/hot foods, most fruits and veggies, sweets, etc. all smell and taste like a sewage system.
it’s so frustrating because i’m already fasting for ramadan and my stomach has shrunk because of the fasting so it’s hard enough to keep anything down. not to mention, this is literally an ED page and eating is already something i struggle with, and as soon as i try to increase my calories and recover, i literally can’t stomach anything.
a really sick, twisted part of me is kinda glad for the parosmia because i graduate in a few weeks and i’ll probably lose a lot of weight before then if things keep going the way they are.
has anyone else who’s recovered from covid been experiencing these symptoms? i haven’t met anyone with this and it’s really hard describing it to my mother, who thinks she knows everything and keeps saying “oh it can’t be that bad, just eat!” like no shit, i would if i could 😭
