Loss of smell and taste continued for months with little improvement. Then one day, out of the blue, tap water tasted really chemical to me. This was in July, and rapidly, everyday things became distorted in a vile way. My husband’s aftershave is horrendous. I can’t go out to eat or drink. I hold my nose to drink even water.
— For Kelly De-Gol, Covid-19 brought first anosmia, then parosmia. Read more in Why Losing Your Sense of Smell With Covid-19 Is So Traumatizing at Elemental.
These poor people, I have read this, which is one of the reasons I’m being so careful. That and not wanting to get anyone else sick. I think I’d rather lose my eyesight.
Wow, that’s a hard choice.
I had a non-life-threatening confluence of health issues in late May that were almost certainly not COVID-related (though I was never tested for that), but all of sudden some things started tasting disgusting. (My sense of smell was unaltered.) I had been drinking Diet Coke for decades, and suddenly it was so revolting I had to go through caffeine withdrawal: I haven’t had it since. Not long afterwards, I couldn’t stomach sparkling water, either — it tasted hideously acrid and metallic in a way it never had before — so goodbye SodaStream. It was *very* weird, and I guess still is. Your senses can change at the drop of a hat, it seems.
I have always thought canned soda pop or sparkling water tastes like the can, though I will sometimes have some! I am glad your taste change was not too wide-spread!
Wow — I have said here before that giving up my severe diet coke addiction was one of the hardest things I ever did. So that’s an amazing testament to how much smell and taste matters.
I had something similar happen during pregnancy. Water tasted so bad that I got dehydrated and ended up having to get infusion treatments until the end of my second trimester. The body works so strangely sometimes.