COVID-19 Chronicles: Not Going to Flavor Town

Almost fainted today, after two days I can say that my decision to quit taking my medicine was a poor choice, back on it now

Yesterday I was feeling so much better, maybe 7/10? I showered, got dressed, and actually cooked a simple dinner

(Frozen entree on baking sheet, microwaved baked potatoes, chopped and sautéed wedge of cabbage, sat on chair between steps)

Today back in my nightgown, ill and weak, brain fog messing up my speech, dizzy as I have been in two weeks

One of the worst parts about COVID is the roller coaster, feeling better then worse, worse then better, completely unpredictable

Talked to one of my friends from Virus Brunch, she is still sick and it’s been a month, may as well reset my expectations now

Maybe I won’t be contagious any more, which is great, but sort of a moot point because there’s nowhere to go, not missing out on anything

Where would I go? Would not trust to expose myself to friends or family. Too tired to walk or ride bike. Bookstore, movies, I can get books and movies online, restaurant? Can’t taste anything

Very curious whether I could taste wasabi but not worth shelling out for sushi just to find out the hard way

I lost my sense of taste and smell not quite three weeks ago and only a few specific notes have come back so far, supposedly this is a symptom of the milder cases, so it wouldn’t be too morbid to have a COVID game show, you could even do it remotely

Get the COVID person on camera with a blindfold and feed them samples of random stuff from the fridge, see what we can and can’t taste, laugh riot

Like 9 1/2 Weeks except I sure hope I am not sick that long

I can taste a generic “red fruity” flavor that is apparently the same for cherry, berry, and pomegranate, but I can’t taste lemon

Can smell one specific body wash and one specific perfume, why I thought I got my sense of smell back a while ago, but I can’t smell soap, shampoo, conditioner, other body wash, bleach, deodorant, the only other fragrances I have really picked up are one scented candle for a minute or so, and freshly washed sheets

Cannot smell any body odors of any kind

I can pick up “cooking food steam” as ‘food’ but I can’t tell what is cooking, not even baking bread or grilled onion

Can taste potato, broccoli, cauliflower, sourdough bread (any other bread tastes like nothing), margarine, salt but not pepper, can kinda smell garlic but can’t taste it

Can feel heat from spicy stuff like curry or black bean soup but can’t actually taste it at all

Can’t taste any flavor of tea, just hot water

Can’t taste chocolate or mint, thus my Valentine’s Thin Mints are still safe in freezer

Starting to get alcohol burn back from mouthwash but still no flavor

Can taste vinegar again, so pickles have flavor, but can only taste the vinegar part of mustard, strange lunchtime mystery

One of the ways a person with a mild case of coronavirus can repay kind friends and roommates is to give them dibs on anything good, anything with any kind of flavor, it’s just wasted on us

Eat the soup that nobody else wants, why not

I ate black bean soup tonight and it tasted bean like, but that was about it, I think there was tomato in it? Looked like it anyway

I guess only about 30% of COVID patients lose taste and smell, my hubby didn’t and neither did my friend, but for some people it is the only symptom they get, if you’ve been wondering whether you already had it or not, that is one of the big clues

Research still trying to figure out why this happens, a few speculations, one, yeast overgrowth, i don’t think that is it because I can taste and smell a few things

Definitely not nasal congestion

Another guess, receptor cells in nose, no idea if those are selective for specific scents, does not really explain loss of flavors

Yet another guess, neurochemistry, this I believe because I have had a series of problems that seem more brain-related

Woke up from groggy nap to see that my thumb was just twitching away

Vertigo came back, my friend hasn’t been able to shake it

I can read okay now, and guess what? Been solving cryptograms!

But when I try to speak even very simple sentences I mix up words, so frustrating, blurt out a word that wasn’t what I intended, pull a word I had planned from later in the sentence, substituting nouns, swapping word-initial consonants

We studied all this stuff in linguistics, speech pathologist want to talk to me HMU

One of the little disappointments of a protracted illness is the deadlines that slip, I really had been looking forward to surprising my family and inviting them on a call tonight

But talking is still the hardest thing right now, makes me so so tired, also very annoying when I can’t get through a simple sentence without messing up

Can mostly read aloud okay though

This is why these posts are so long, one of the few things I have the ability and attention span to do, I used to type 100 words per minute and now it’s more like 40, pretty good for a talking dog huh

I’ve been thinking about the book Flowers for Algernon lately quite a bit, could be either cheerful or depressing depending, if only I could see the future

Either I will gradually feel my brain coming back to life and be able to talk like a normal person

Or it will go the other way and I’ll just wind up a cranky, aphasic picky eater

They wouldn’t want me in Flavor Town anyway