A year after I contracted COVID-19, everything still smells like garbage and onions. One expert says it could last up to 3 years.
I am living with a long-COVID symptom called parosmia, which distorts my sense of smell to make everything smell unpleasant.
By Sophia Ankel
When I completely lost my sense of taste and smell in March 2020, it was the first thing I noticed.
It was a completely surreal experience, even more so because, at the time, loss of sense or smell — otherwise known as anosmia — wasn’t officially recognized as a COVID-19 symptom yet.
So when my nose started to pick up some aromas three months later, I was elated. Only this time, it wasn’t the same and hasn’t been the same since.
For more than a year now, my nose has been plagued with what I like to call “COVID smell.”
“COVID smell” is nothing like I’ve ever smelled before. But when I try to describe it to friends, I explain it as the stench of garbage, raw onions, and sweaty armpits.
The scientific term for this distortion of the ability to smell is parosmia, the “alteration of the sense of smell, that is usually unpleasant and caused by damage to olfactory neurons in the nerve center,” according to Health.com.
