Today marks one year since I woke up 5 days into my COVID infection without taste or smell. Both are still mostly missing. I’m very fortunate and can smell some things that are important to me: my children’s hair, laundry fresh off the clothesline, some flowers and many herbs. I can sense sour and sweet and spicy, though I might not be able to differentiate between different foods.

However: I’ve given myself food poisoning a dozen times because I can’t tell when things are rotten and when meals make no impression, you don’t remember when you put them in the fridge. I cannot smell natural gas, and have not noticed a couple times when I bumped a burner or the igniter didn’t work. (I now light the burner with a lighter every time to make sure.)

Like a lot of other folks with this long-Covid symptom, I have parosmia. Some foods and smells remain horrible. Coffee tastes and smells like oily cigarette ash. Apples taste like gasoline. Peaches taste like garlic. Cheese mostly tastes rotten and coconut tastes like soap. We haven’t traveled much, but trying to put together a safe meal on the road has been nigh impossible a couple times.

I’m incredibly fortunate that anosmia and parosmia are my only #longcovid symptoms and to have the resources to buy the foods that do work for me, but this sucks. I’m consulting with a new doc tomorrow, but have been told my insurance will almost certainly deny any treatments we try. Also, I’d like to thank the Korean people for kimchi. Throughout all this, it’s the one food that has always tasted like itself and on bad days, falling back on kimchi fried rice has been a blessing.