Nothing more to smell, no longer to taste - the loss of these two senses is a common long-covid disease.
How do those affected deal with it?
A woman from Holzkirchen (37) reports how she trains smelling and tasting again - and how much the quality of life suffers when eating and drinking cannot be sensually felt.
Holzkirchen
- “Most of what I eat tastes like cardboard. The rest, especially yoghurt and paprika, tastes rotten and rotten. ”Kathrin Robinson (37) is sitting in a café and talking. About her corona infection, but above all about its consequences, which she still suffers from today: For eight months she has barely been able to smell and taste; her husband had the same symptoms, but they were soon gone from him. She sips a white coffee. “Somehow it tastes like milk,” she says.
Kathrin Robinson is the mother of two little boys, one and three years old.
The woman from Holzkirchen has a slim, sporty appearance and looks cheerful.
But she has a problem.
“If you can't smell or taste anything, you lose your appetite for eating and drinking,” she says.
A piece of the quality of life is lost.
Only now did she understand how much food and drink enrich life.
“You hardly think about that beforehand.” It doesn't sound bitter, rather angry.
The virus struck shortly after Christmas
Kathrin Robinson suffers from Long Covid. Like many others who suffer from the long-term consequences of a corona infection, you are particularly troubled by the loss of taste and smell. The woman from Holzkirchen is no exception: Experts estimate that around half of corona patients develop such disorders. That is no consolation.
"We have always taken the virus seriously," emphasizes Robinson, who works part-time for a recruitment agency in Munich. The family adhered to all relevant guidelines. Shortly after Christmas 2020, the 37-year-old got it: 14 days of quarantine for the whole family. Initially, Robinson suffered from difficulty breathing, headaches, and chest pressure. Since she, who does a lot of sport, even made problems climbing stairs. "It felt like a bad cold." After a few days it was over.
But taste or smell - that never came back.
“At first I thought it would go away again.” But it didn't work.
After four weeks, the woman from Holzkirchen turned to a speech therapist friend, who recommended a “scent set” with four scents: clove, rose, lime and eucalyptus.
To this day, training has been carried out twice a day: “I smell it and say the odor name out loud to me.” This is how the sense of smell and, as a result, taste can be relearned.
"The whole thing seems a bit strange, sometimes I have to laugh at myself," she admits.
Cooking becomes a dry run
The first successes have emerged.
“But it's very arduous,” says Robinson, “every improvement stays at a level for a few weeks until it gets a little better.
Nobody knows whether the small advances are due to the scent set - or a natural healing process.
Even if the taste buds and nose are still not working properly, the Holzkirchen native has retained her sense of humor.
“If I can't taste anything, at least I can eat healthy,” she says.
Vitamin-rich food, lots of fruit - it can't hurt.
"Salt?
You don't notice.
So I can leave it out when I'm cooking. "
Cooking in general, it becomes a dry run. “I cook from memory, as it were, according to the motto: Could fit like that,” reports the 37-year-old. The beloved glass of red wine in the evening - doesn't taste like anything anymore. “I'll save myself the headache the next day,” she laughs. Kathrin Robinson occasionally needs taster: "I can't smell or taste whether the milk is bad for coffee."
The mother of a nappy-changing child can no longer rely on her nose to determine whether the son's diaper is full.
Only regular checks help.
Sometimes, says the woman from Holzkirchen, she is really happy about small experiences of success.
The other day she poured detergent into the machine.
“And for a brief moment I really smelled the powder, that chemical aroma.
Such moments are indescribable. “
VOLKER CAMEHN
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