COVID, Parosmia and a Wet Dog
What do COVID, Parosmia, and a wet dog have in common? What in the hell is Parosmia anyway, and why do I care?
I was in with my Mrs. Average in Richmond, Virginia in mid-May and was one of the lucky few who managed to get COVID-19 for a second time. The fever wasn’t as bad this time, but I managed to get a rare side effect post-COVID. I noticed that I kept smelling what I can best describe as a wet dog. At first, I thought maybe our pooch got into something and just needed a bath. But no one else in the family spelled it. And I noticed that I kept smelling it, even when I was not at home or near the Average Dog.
That is when I decided to see what Dr. Google had to say about it and sure enough, it is a rare side-effect of the COVID-19 infection, called Parosmia. Parosmia is actually just a fancy-sounding word for a distorted sense of smell. It happens when smell receptor cells in your nose don’t detect odors or transmit them to your brain. Causes include bacterial or viral infections, head trauma, neurological conditions, and COVID-19. Parosmia is usually temporary, but in some cases, it’s permanent.
According to what I can find, it can often be an unpleasant smell like “burned”, “rotting”, “fecal” or a chemical smell. In fact, after Average Daughter-In-Law was infected with her first go around of COVID-19, she had to deal with a case of Parosmia that made things smell like she best described it as a “porta-potty”. Thanks, but no thanks, I’ll take the wet dog smell.
There is an article on the BBC about a lady who has the very same problem.
According to what I can find online, some 6.5 million people out of the 100 million who have had COVID-19 worldwide, may now be experiencing long-covid parosmia. Oh, joy and I know my Rheumatologist has already told me that I have “Long-Covid”, fun times.
