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Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

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Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#71

I lost my sense of taste a few years ago, from a combination of extreme stress and the flu. Lasted about a week, and it was utterly terrifying. I first noticed it when I tried to eat, iirc scrambled eggs, and couldn't stop gagging on the texture. Once I figured out what was going on, it took a couple days to figure out what I could eat without retching. I ended up being entirely vegetarian - meat without taste is a h…

About 5 years ago I got a cold or flu while travelling. I flew home (3 hour flight) when my head was at its worst, eyes wouldn't stop watering, blocked up nose, sore throat.

When we came into land my left ear didn't pop and I went completely deaf in my left ear. I was so freaked out by it. If I snapped my fingers next to my left ear I couldn't hear it at all. Doctor told me to not worry, it will come back, asked me to go see him if it wasn't normal again after 1 month.

About 2 weeks later I was sitting at work and out of no where i had this weird sensation in my left ear and in a few seconds it was like a increasing rush of air followed by a popping sound and my hearing was back, I was shocked I stood up in the office and was like "MY HEARING IS BACK!", I was so happy.

Even tho I could ear from my right ear, it was a horrible experience. I couldn't imagine permanently losing any sensory be it hearing, taste, vision, smell, touch. I wouldn't wish the experience on anyone.

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#72
post #69
post #3

So much emphasis is placed on the fatality rate, but there’s a lot of middle ground between asymptomatic and dead.

This. I had it. Literally every symptom except loss of taste and smell (but had some other rarer symptoms like the pink eye thing). Also had a cough for like a month, and loss of energy and breath for about a month and a half. Only just recently feel 100%. While it was shitty and lingered a while the worst of it wasn't actually that much worse than a flu for me. Somewhere between the flu and bronchitis on the scale o…

I had the worst cold I've experienced in a decade or more. Absolute loss of energy. Terrible aches; temperature all over the place. This was followed by two months of bronchitis that is still ongoing and failed to respond to two different kinds of antibiotics (the implication being that it's not bacterial). I never got tested because testing was not easy to get in early March; serologies aren't being done yet where I live. I'm so curious: did I have _IT_?

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#73
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago, I also lost my sense of taste for a few days (toothpaste burned my tongue)... I would also describe it as terrifying and immediately depressing. The next day I had pizza and cake with tons of frosting, but everything tasted like soap. I was really concerned that the damage to my taste was permanent. I was in disbelief for a few days. As I ate my regular meals, I just reminded myself that they were things I…

How does toothpaste burn your tongue

Yes, ceedan says that somewhere in the world there is a toothpaste that if you use it, it will burn up your tongue and you will loose your sense of taste... yet doesn't provide the name of the toothpaste. WHY?

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#74
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed for the US. The two sides seem to be “workers and grandma need to die for the economy” and “workers and grandma need to die for the economy, in phases, as described by this PowerPoint.”

Let's leave the political jabs out of HN and keep this civil. Realistically, the US isn't trying to kill their grandmas.

[deleted]

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#75
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago, I also lost my sense of taste for a few days (toothpaste burned my tongue)... I would also describe it as terrifying and immediately depressing. The next day I had pizza and cake with tons of frosting, but everything tasted like soap. I was really concerned that the damage to my taste was permanent. I was in disbelief for a few days. As I ate my regular meals, I just reminded myself that they were things I…

How does toothpaste burn your tongue

One of the active ingredients in some mouthwashes is known to cause taste loss: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dentistry/comments/21vddm/i_lost_my...

I discovered this after starting to use Crest Gum Care mouthwash and it was pretty annoying.

Luckily the loss of taste was not permanent and returned a few days after stopping use.

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#76
We may be entering a new phase of this disease soon. Treatments are coming along.

Stanford is testing interferon-lambda.[1] Known drug, used for treating hepatitis. This has to be given early, within 2 days of testing positive for the virus. A group in the UK is testing interferon-beta.

Eli Lily is testing an engineered antibody.[2] This is new technology, an antibody specifically targeted to this virus. Testing in humans just started; no results yet. Lily is putting this into production in advance of testing, to get the production scaleup problems out of the way, in hope it works.

There are other drugs in development; these are all in human testing now.

Early stage treatment options change things. Advice will change from "stay home until it gets serious" to "get tested and treated as soon as there's any suspicion." Instead of overloaded ICUs, front-line medical care gets overloaded. It really starts to matter than the US doesn't have enough testing capacity.

[1] https://med.stanford.edu/id/covid19/lambda.html

[2] https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/eli-lilly-abcellera-coron...

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#77
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To pile on. Ben & Jerry's ice cream has large chunks of toppings because Ben Cohen had a reduced ability to smell. He charactized quality heavily towards texture of the ice cream resulting in what Ben & Jerry's is know for today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Cohen_(businessman)

There’s a good story in the Ben & Jerry’s cookbook about how Ben and Jerry argued about which size chunks of Heath bar to use in their ice cream. They ended up with the perfect mix of little shards and big chunks by freezing a case of Heath bars and throwing it onto the concrete floor from the top of a ladder.

It was my favorite ice cream...wish somebody else sold something similar...

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#79

For older people loss of smell seems to indicate a higher probability to die within 5 years. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182669/#!po=0....

Food poisoning will get ya. That’s why we have this chemistry lab in our heads, taking up a bunch of useful space in the center.

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#80

I lost my sense of taste a few years ago, from a combination of extreme stress and the flu. Lasted about a week, and it was utterly terrifying. I first noticed it when I tried to eat, iirc scrambled eggs, and couldn't stop gagging on the texture. Once I figured out what was going on, it took a couple days to figure out what I could eat without retching. I ended up being entirely vegetarian - meat without taste is a h…

I lost most of my sense of smell a few years ago. I've lost much of my ability to differentiate tastes as well.

As a former supertaster, lover of bourbon (I used to be able to tell my bourbons apart by smell), serious cook, and total foodie this has been the most depressing experience in my life.

Think about the experience that you have when you walk from one room to another, or into a field of flowers. I can't smell the differences between rooms, I can't smell the flowers, I can't even smell smoke.

People love to say you're so lucky you can't smell all of those bad smells but life isn't about the bad smells. Smell is memory. We wake up and smell the air around us, the dirt, the trees, the people we love, the people we hate, even exhaust fumes. The smell of ink on paper, spices, lavender, tea, the air after an electrical storm, the subtleties in beer, freshly fallen snow, rain, grass, the aroma of wine, freshly roasted coffee. I can no longer smell any of that.

When I realized that my loss of sense of smell was permanent I was suicidal for many months. I've gotten over that feeling for the most part and now I work to make the best of it because this is just the way that things are.

We all have our challenges. When faced with things that we can't change the best way forward is to work with what we have and make the best of it. Since I can no longer tell when food is ready by the change of smell I have to pay close attention to what it looks like and use a thermometer to carefully monitor its temperature. I can't tell when something is burning.

I've installed gas sensors in my house because I can't smell the gas that comes out of my gas range but I refuse to cook on electric. I have an induction burner but it's not the same. You can't beat fire. And I'm not giving up. I've gotten pretty good at roasting coffee but mostly by eye.

My 1966 Volvo caught fire as I was driving because I couldn't smell the gas coming out of the leaking fuel pump or the smoke coming out of the engine.

Fortunately my neighbor was in the passenger seat and he pointed out that the engine was on fire. He kept telling me that the car was beginning to smell a lot like fuel and he asked me if he could open the windows. (It's an old car so things break easily.) Fortunately the car didn't explode and we got out safely.

Loss of smell is no fun. Try cooking or eating while holding your nose. You'll get the idea. Just keep in mind that it's always like that. You can breathe in as deeply as you like and you still won't get the smells. You won't create the new memories and you'll have a hard time recalling the various smells that you've grown up with. They'll fade with time.

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