Almost everyone I know has had COVID except for me and my wife and I haven't understood why. While COVID is nothing I've ever aspired to, I'd like to know if I'm one of those people who is apparently immune. I've read that folks with O-negative blood -- my type -- are less likely to get it. And that men with full heads of hair are more resistant than balding men. (Thank you, grandpa, for that gene.) This may sound weird but in ways I have been feeling left out, like the last kid picked for the dodgeball team.
We were vaccinated in February and March, 2021, and received our first booster in November. My doctor told me to put off having the second booster, and I was glad I followed his advice after friends came down with COVID within weeks after receiving it.
Like most people, we stayed close to home during the early months of the pandemic. But by mid-summer 2020, we were venturing out, selectively, to restaurants and social events. Until a month after our second shot, we wore masks everywhere but as requirements eased, we stopped. I hadn’t worn a mask in months until week before last when I went to DC where Uber and Lyft passengers were required to mask up. (That requirement has since been lifted.)
This year almost everyone in our social circle — all of them vaccinated, many having had their second booster shots — has gotten COVID. I haven’t understood how Judy and I somehow missed it.
Turns out I didn’t.
Early this summer, I ran out of Irish Spring in the middle of a shower. I asked my wife to hand me a fresh bar. I love the scent of a brand new bar of soap but couldn’t smell it. To my amazement, I realized I couldn’t smell anything — her perfume, the dogs’ stinky breath, coffee, gasoline when I filled my tank, fresh bread baking in the oven. (Disclosure: We’ve never made bread but if we had, I couldn’t have smelled it.) Cigars were the only scent I could detect and I smelled them everywhere — at home, at the gym, in the supermarket, at the dentist’s office. Neither I nor anybody I know smokes cigars.
Around the same time, food began to taste odd. I made a pot of my famous beef vegetable soup and threw it out — it was disgusting. I hadn’t deviated from the recipe so I assumed I’d used spoiled ingredients. We ordered a pizza and I couldn’t finish the first piece. You name it — cheese, meat (especially bacon), eggs, milk, cereal, vegetables, ice cream, basically anything and everything — either tasted gross or had no taste at all. The one exception was fruit-flavored hard candy. Even chocolate tasted awful.
In early July I visited an ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat) practice. Naturally, I didn’t get to see the doctor — apparently one gets to see a new doctor these days only if a major appendage has been sawed off and is spurting blood like Old Faithful — I saw a Nurse Practitioner. She asked if I was aware my symptoms were consistent with COVID. I said of course I was but, to the best of my knowledge, I hadn’t had it. She asked if I had allergies. I said yes. She asked when I had last been tested for allergies. I said four or five years ago. She ordered a CAT scan of my sinuses. It revealed inflammation but nothing alarming. She then ordered new allergy tests. It took a month to get tested because the front office screwed up the preparation instructions. By this point, I was finding food repulsive and was subsisting on mashed potatoes, bread and Tootsie Roll Pops. I couldn’t taste the first two but they didn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth like everything else did. The Tootsie Roll Pops tasted pretty much as they had back when they cost two cents each rather than a quarter.
Once the allergy test results confirmed I wasn’t severely allergic to anything that could be causing my problem, the Nurse Practitioner ordered an MRI of my brain. She said my symptoms might be caused by brain cancer, Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. Swell. But the front office screwed that up, too. I waited two weeks for the radiology center to call to schedule the MRI, as she said they would. I finally called them and learned they had never gotten the order. Nor had the pharmacy to which the nurse said she had sent my allergy prescriptions.
Disgusted with the idiot ENT practice, I did what I should have done in the first place and went to my regular GP this past Friday. He drew blood for a COVID Antibody Test and sent it to a testing center. Yesterday I learned that I apparently had asymptomatic COVID. The doctor estimates that, based on the strength of my antibodies, I had it sometime between three and four months ago. Last week, I read in the WSJ that up to 40 percent of those who get COVID have no symptoms at all. I was one of the 40 percent, and was enormously relieved to learn my loss of taste and smell is likely the result of COVID rather than one of the insidious alternatives. Lucky me. The doctor said I should wait a month or more before I get my second booster shot since I still have a high degree of immunity.
A question for my readers who’ve read this far: If you had COVID and lost your smell/taste senses, how long did it take for them to return? Did they, in fact, return? And if so, did you recover them fully or only partially? I would really appreciate hearing from you so I can manage my own expectations. I'm not complaining about my loss of smell and taste. I know too many people struggling with life-threatening illnesses to complain about something that picayune and I'm grateful I didn't know I had COVID at the time I had it, but I haven’t been able to find reliable statistics about the 20 percent or so of COVID patients who lose their taste/smell and how quickly they recover. If you’re reading this via a Facebook link, you can reply on Facebook. Otherwise, please email me at tom.dryden@gmail.com.
While I’ll never get tired of good bread, I never much liked mashed potatoes. And my teeth are going to rot away if I keep eating a dozen Tootsie Roll Pops a day.
Thanks, and have a good day.
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