What its like to lose your sense of taste and smell (at Christmas)
By: Remy Millar
Tags: Sense Of Smell, Food And Drink, Covid 19, Coronavirus, Health

Eli Defaria | Unsplash

When I was a teenager, no amount of perfume, chewing gum or hand washing could disguise the smell of cigarette smoke from my mother. She’s also diagnosed impending sore throats and current cavities. When I lived in a basement flat, my mother referred to me as Ms Damp because everything I owned was imbibed with the smell of mould, rotting wood, and moths.

I inherited her gift — hyperosmia, or a really heightened sense of smell.

When I was younger I was able to identify the owner of each identical school jumper in my class. Marshmallows, straw, and fried oil were all descriptions of friends’ smells that I remember — usually a diluted version of their ‘family’ smell, a combination of pheromones, cooking, and laundry that radiates beyond the front door and lingers on hair and clothes. In turn, I’ve smelt a gas leak in my new home, known my ex was taking drugs by the smell of his face, and noticed biological changes that pointed to my own unplanned pregnancy. I’m grateful to have been able to sniff them out before any of the above had adverse effects on my life had I not sniffed them out.

So it was highly disorientating, when, after testing positive for coronavirus, I lost my sense of smell and taste on Christmas Day. A day known for stimulating the senses, for gifts of heady scented candles, lingering pine, and extreme indulgence of the senses.

I sniffed a bottle of Tabasco. Nothing — just a whisper of movement traveling up my nose, like I was breathing in the ghost of a dandelion pappus. I doused my food in it, and felt only some delicate prickling on my tongue. I chopped some onions, and thought perhaps if I couldn’t smell it my tear ducts couldn’t either, but no, my eyes streamed like they always do. A peppermint tea was nothing but a gentle tingle on my lips. Eating a raw garlic clove felt like a tiny imp squeezing my tongue with a clawed hand. I ate a lemon and my salivary glands shot into action like tram lines. I watched cooking shows and my mouth watered at the concept of flavours. But still I could taste nothing.

My appetite has waned but not because of a lack of hunger — more a loss of motivation to eat. It made me think about my reasons for eating (mindfulness, I think they call it?) which, at Christmas, is driven by gluttony rather than nourishment.

I found myself dreading the feeling of hunger. Eating is depressingly functional when you can’t taste anything. It took a few days to work out which festive food is repulsive without flavour — a parsnip feels like you’re chewing on a human finger, a fresh orange juice is unpleasantly viscous, and the concept of eating mould in the guise of blue cheese really comes into question when all you have is texture.

Texture became everything — it’s the only mouth sensation I had, aside from temperature. What I was drawn to were things that were crunchy (honeycomb, pretzels, biscuits), fluffy (panantone, mashed potatoes, candy floss) or effervescent (champagne, sodas, vitamin c tablets). I could detect fat as well — of course it tasted of nothing, but the oiliness coating my tongue and teeth was pleasant(ish), with a memory of saltiness coming through if I really tried to conjure it.

I’m making a list of things for my taste recovery celebration feast — balsamic vinegar, a chocolate orange, a cheese board, tabouleh, tequila, ice cream. In that order, and out of that order, and all together, at once. Until then, I’m making potent concoctions burgeoning with nutritional ingredients that would taste disgusting — turmeric, garlic and miscellaneous frozen fruit had sat for too long next to the frozen onions without their flavour being compromised. And I have promised myself I will eat with more purpose and more gratitude when — if — my senses come back.