Of course, wishing for something isn't going to bring it to you, make it real. Sometimes it's just an enjoyable fantasy, like an exotic vacation getaway or winning a large lottery jackpot, where reality would bring complications into your life. Other times it's something more grounded in reality, something small, practical, something where it coming true isn't likely to turn into a disaster, like having a nice bit of weather for an outdoor party, or a timely phone chat with a friend when your schedules mesh.
One seldom has to really be careful about their wishes because wishes have no real power. Even so, sometimes those wishes happen to come true, but in the most unfortunate ways, because of course they do. Life is just like that. Murphy's Law, and all that.
Now you know I just happen to have a story about a wish coming true.
Let's go back just a few years, when covid vaccinations were finally available, and we seniors were #2 in line to get them. Of course we did, and loved being able to travel again. We headed north a couple weeks earlier than normal, before the summer travel rush was on, and had some great experiences in national parks before arriving at our usual summer destination. We got to see family and friends again, though still keeping social distancing most of the time. Before heading south again for one fast long-haul trip, we had one last outdoor bonfire party.
Arriving home, I was exhausted unloading the car. Shortly afterwards, I had a fever and felt sick for the first time in years. I had covid! After warning everybody I knew I'd had close contact with, I took my positive test to the ER and got Paxlovid to help fight it. In a couple weeks I felt normal again, though still waiting on a negative test, and feeling cooped up that extra week, now that brain fog was clearing.
Fast forward another couple years and I caught covid a second time, despite masking, distancing, and keeping up vaccinations as often as offered. I didn't actually feel sick this time like the first, but repeated the ER visit and asked for Paxlovid again. This time it wasn't covered, and I declined paying the price of over a grand for it. I seemed to be having a milder case anyway.
But there was one thing. I shortly realized I had lost both my sense of taste and smell. Well over a year later I started tasting things again. But they were different. Certain things were blocked, like whatever it is in fresh tomatoes that makes me hate them. I actually loved to gobble up tomatoes! I still do, in fact. As time passed, more flavors came back... mostly.
But the nose stubbornly refused to come back. Aside from pregnancy, when everything edible smelled like rotted garbage in a puddle of chemicals, I had what I referred to as my mother's nose, the most sensitive one in the family, something I totally enjoyed. I would smell something burning before the smoke detectors went off, for example. I could tell what in the refrigerator was spoiled, smell flowers and freshly mown grass, lake algae in a most pleasant way when others around me were repelled.
Now two things above all I missed. There is a wild white or yellow spiked flower called sweet clover, and every year in late summer when they bloomed it was the same instant revelation that this was the thing I had been missing all year since last summer, and had even forgotten existed until I suddenly smelled it again. The other thing I haven't smelled for years due to our snowbird travels, but I call it the smell of fall, where plants have begun to fill the air with tannins after a frost, as they prepare for winter. It had been a notice to me of every fall bringing the best things in childhood, returning to school, birthdays, leaves changing colors and playing in piles of them, Halloween on the horizon, south-migrating flocks of birds overhead, and the end of mosquitoes for months, the very best part!
After the second bout of covid, I had none of that any more. I also couldn't tell you if foods had spoiled or were still safe to eat, whether something was burning in the oven, or even if it wasn't and wonderful aromas filled the house - for other people. I couldn't tell whether I stunk, or clothes needed washing without obvious dirt on them, or whether anybody had farted quietly. (Loud farts I heard, but still couldn't smell.) There was a noxious leak on the floor behind the toilet in the bathroom I don't use that a guest had to point out to us. It had to get fixed twice because I assumed the plumber did the complete job the first time.
In my many reading wanderings, I started finding stories from people with long covid. At first it was a battle with their doctors to get their condition recognized, and named. Early on, those sickest had the easiest fight with acknowledgment. Later less severe things got mentioned, including some people who'd lost smell and taste, though it didn't seem to stir the medical community to name it as long covid, or to research it, much less find solutions. After all, we could still move around fairly normally, go to work, interact with others. We just weren't enjoying some of the basic small pleasures in life, boo hoo hoo ... yawn. There are really sick folks out there (so get over yourselves!) seemed to be the attitudes, and I do understand them, after how burned out so many medical professionals were. It simply wasn't helpful for us.
Last summer things started to change. The newest shots came out, different ones that were supposed to be able to adapt to the mutations that were coming at us more frequently. Steve and I got ours right at summers end, to best protect us from being indoors with others who might be incubating who knows what next. Now I almost never feel a sore arm from any shots, and I didn't this time either. They say the worse your arm feels, the better your immune system is working. They were saying it a lot back then, so I was asking myself whether I'd know if it was working, or I just had a lousy immune system. But within a couple weeks I started tasting my food! I concluded this different shot somehow found some reservoir of the virus in my taste buds and nailed the little pests. So.... why not my nose?
Around then hints were coming out that losing taste and smell were being considered a kind of long covid. Well, that's helpful, I guess. Much more recently I was reading a study that stopped "maybe-ing" the idea, and just declared it flat out. I officially had long covid. At last, a name!
OK, and so....?
It went on to talk about some kind of surgery to deal with the lack of smell. Hmmm, something to think about. How much do I want smell back? But I also put that diagnosis in my personal health record, with clarification of which symptom(s). A few days later a similar study claimed those particular symptoms tended to go away after around 2 years. OK, so scratch surgery then, or at least wait a bit more to see what happens. But why the delay with the nose?
I'm looking forward to summer, watching my flowers come up with all their blooms. I have no idea if the ones that bloomed here on bushes last summer have any fragrance. I'm also looking forward to cut grass smell, now that we're back living with an actual lawn instead of a rock bed, and not having to depend on Steve's nose to clear out the fridge since his never was that sensitive the way mine was. I found myself wishing my nose would come back into use soon if that two-year thing was true.
Then I walked into one particular room in the house and without thinking, out popped "Boy it stinks in here!" Then it hit me what just happened. Sure there was some cleaning up to do, but it felt like a celebration! The nose was coming back, "blessing" me with the most obnoxious stench in the house, because that's the way some wishes get granted, the ugliest, nastiest way possible.
So far it's still the strong things, but that's how taste came back too: not dependably, not fully even now, but no longer absent. I know what burned on the stove a couple days back. I now know how awful the large waste basket under the kitchen sink stinks after food scraps collect because it holds over a full week's worth, and the bags have to be purchased for that, unlike the small wastebaskets which hold smaller free bags from shopping and get emptied every few days. I can smell fresh baked pizza, and my sap sago grated cheese. I know the eggs are good and the week-long opened package of brats is too. Someday I might smell coffee again, but I've been drinking it for years now without needing to enjoy it, and plan to continue. Laundry will get done more often too along with other household chores.
It's not just sanitation issues or food spoilage issues that will be improved. There is one major health issue for me as well. I should soon be able to smell cigarette smoke. I need to avoid it, because after more than 40 years of second hand smoke, it affects my cardiac rhythms. I'm looking forward to being able, again, to be three feet outside somebody's front door and tell if they smoke in the house. I can chose not to go in.
After this morning I can finally tell you that the antiperspirant I chose arbitrarily over a year ago is actually quite pleasant smelling. Lucky me!
Luckier you! I'll be sure to use it every day again.
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