Saturday Afternoon Chat: I can’t smell. I can’t taste. But I can feel the wind on my face.

Hello! Welcome to my Saturday Afternoon Chat.

Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?

Or a glass of juice?

No matter what we have, I won’t be able to taste it after I caught Covid again this week and have lost my smell and taste.

(Update: the rest of this post is still accurate but I scheduled it last night and forgot to change it before it went live – as of this morning I can taste and smell a lot better than I could. It is not 100 percent but it is so much better!

That’s right. I’m having an awesome week, one which started with me slipping in the snow and doing a type of split. My body is not built for splits.

I was okay, despite the fall, but my back was sore and spasming in pain off and on that day and night. Then the fever and chills hit – fever and chills The Husband had also had but we thought was a cold or the flu.

Yesterday morning a home test said I had the dreaded virus.

If you’ve been here a while, you know I had a pretty severe case of Covid in 2021 so catching Covid again definitely has me on edge.

This case feels way different than that one, but I still wonder if I will have similar issues with my oxygen this time around.

So far this is more like a head cold with a stuffy nose and a lot of nose and head pressure. My oxygen has also been fine but I won’t lie that I have had to fight a battle of my mind this week.

My mind has gone back time and time again since yesterday morning to two years ago when I was in the hospital, hooked up to oxygen and wondering what my future was going to hold or if I’d even have one.

Yesterday I found myself wondering – will it happen again? Will I think I’m doing okay, but suddenly I won’t be?

Not that I thought I was doing okay that first time around but I was still shocked when I was admitted because I thought I was breathing fine.

The blood gas said I was not doing fine at all it turns out.

So I spent the next five days in the hospital getting an antiviral through an IV even though my oxygen did come back up on only a small amount of oxygen.

(You can read more about all that here and here and here and here.)

By the time I tested yesterday I was already feeling a bit better. My fever had even started to go down on its own – without medicine. Still, I had no smell and taste and that’s how it was in 2021 so I tested.

I tried to stay calm this time – unlike in 2021 when I Googled anything and everything about Covid for ten days straight, didn’t take care of myself, and ended up in the hospital.

Yesterday I tried to remember the verse that my mom gave me earlier in the week about another issue:

Philippians 4:7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

I tried to remember this verse and most of the time I succeeded but there were moments it all fell apart and my imagination took off again.

It hit 53 here yesterday so I walked outside and breathed in some fresh air (like an author friend suggested) and I squished the grass between my toes even though it was still cold from the snow we’d had earlier in the week that hadn’t melted all the way yet.

I sat down on the porch and began to cry. I could see the sun shining around me and the still-green grass and my cat playing on the hill, but I couldn’t smell anything. Like anything. It’s like being in a vacuum or something – a smell less, lifeless vacuum. If you’ve never completely lost your taste and smell, trust me, it is awful. Eating is a struggle because there is no taste to anything (don’t ever eat hamburger with no smell or taste. Just … horrifying.). A huge chunk of life’s enjoyment is just ripped away from you and life seems very empty somehow, especially when you are someone who relaxes themselves through aroma therapy or the taste of sweet honey in your tea.

I sobbed for quite a long time on the porch, worrying about the future, mourning the loss of my taste and smell – yet again after just getting almost all of it back again.

Then I started to say to myself and to God – “So I have lost my sense of smell and taste but I can feel the warm sun on my face, the cool breeze on my skin, pet my dog’s soft fur (and not have to smell her weird dog smell she gets when she runs in the sun) and watch my young cat jump and play in the grass on a rare warm winter day.

I have lost something very important to me – something that can truly lead to deep depression but I am fever free. I am breathing. I am not weak and totally out of it like I was the first time I had this.

I have a lot to be grateful for despite it all.

As I write this I am also grateful I can breathe through my nose because it has been closed with snot for the last three days.

I am grateful I didn’t have more pain from the fall and that has not been a serious issue.

I’m grateful for my family being supportive, for my son immediately asking if I was okay when I told him I had Covid, for my daughter not being as sick as she was when we had it in 2021.

I am grateful for good movies I could watch and good books to read.

I am asking, though, that you would all pray that the upswing continues and that my son doesn’t get this bad enough to steal his sense of smell and taste. He and I were both hit hard with that in 2021 and the developed parasomia (altered smell and taste) for several months. He could barely eat and he already doesn’t eat well and is very skinny.

He still can’t eat peanut butter because it is absolutely disgusting to him. I eat peanut butter but it hasn’t tasted the same since 2021. I was just finally able to start eating onions and garlic in the last several months without them having what can only be described as “the Covid taste.” It’s like a mix of burnt rubber and smelly feet – not idea how else to explain it.

Little Miss says she feels like the smell loss will last less time this time around and I hope she is right.

Everyone hopes when the inflammation in my nose goes away that will get better.

I don’t know since I know this dreaded virus attacks the olfactory glands in a very odd way, slowly destroying them.

What I want most, though, is for this not to go in my lungs or into the lungs of anyone in my family.

I appreciate my blog readers so much – you don’t even know.

You lifted my spirits the last time I had this and your posts are lifting my spirts now as I read about all that all of you have going on.

Which reminds me – what is going on with all of you? Let me know in the comments – distract me from my worries for a few minutes.