I feel like everyone has talked about every other long haul/Post COVID symptom under the sun except for parosmia & dysgeusia (smelling and tasting things that aren't there as a result of the brain trying to repair damage to taste and smell receptors after COVID), and it's super invalidating to see most people dismiss it as an issue that nobody should care about instead of something that is genuinely distressing and can even be unsafe.
Here are some struggles that people with parosmia and dysgeusia face:
Being unable to tell when foods have expired or gone bad due to everything smelling/tasting bad
Having your sense of reality distorted bc we use our senses to perceive reality (this can especially hurt people who struggle w psychosis)
Autistic people with taste/texture aversions having less things they can eat safely now
People having to struggle w eating being a chore bc taste is no longer an incentive to eat (this can be especially harmful to people who have either recovered from or are still struggling with eating disorders)
It can worsen depression and anxiety since a lot of people with those things use food/other scent related objects (such as bath soaps and candles) as comfort
For people whose hobby, career, or livelihood involved cooking or any kind of scent related work, it can be more difficult or suck the joy out of it
I'm no expert on the matter but I wish more people talked about it when discussing post-COVID symptoms. For the record, I struggled with other things afterward (my lethargy got worse, my heartbeat is irregular at times, I can't exercise as much as I could bc I have trouble breathing and my asthma that I already had is now asthma^2) but those things all get some sort of coverage. Nobody knows how to help or deal with parosmia. And tbh, I think the other symptoms are getting more coverage bc they for the most part are things that impair people from being productive at work while parosmia is more of a quality-of-life issue. But people with parosmia are still suffering and deserve the same care that everyone else gets.
I have this and it’s the worst!
