Virus Diary, three weeks later

 Isolation ended on the 3.september, ten days after I got sick. I was back at work the following Monday, 6.september.

Even if I was no longer dangerous, and no longer had a fever, the world still wasn't right. Both of my ears were blocked, and any up/down and sideways motion was likely to make me dizzy. I had to take frequent breaks, because my work includes a lot of bending down and lifting up. All noises were muted. It felt like there was a distance between my ears and my head. I hadn't felt like this since I was a child and had the flu.

My sense of smell is still heavily influenced. The sense of taste is back, but in a weaker form, and some spices and aromas are simply not there anymore. Most spices in curry aren't noticeable. We ate pasta with cheese and herbs sauce a few days ago, and the sauce tasted like boiled milk. Apple pie tastes sweet and tart, and I can notice the dryness in my mouth from the cinnamon, but not its actual flavour. Coffee tastes bitter, and it is still hard to tell different hot drinks apart.

Most things that used to have a smell has a smell now, but I need to be very close to it in order to actually smell it. The most noticeable exception is coffee. It is simply gone. Some smells can be "smelled" through the mouth. I can taste the smell if I inhale through the mouth at close range. 

The overlay of Wrong 1 and Wrong 2 have mostly faded, but I have noticed something interesting. The smells that come close to those smells have come back, while unrelated smells are still gone. I can for example smell and taste vanilla, some soaps, some fruits, wine, and carnation flowers because they are sweet like Wrong 1. Wood smoke, burnt oil, whisky, eucalyptus, sesame oil and black pepper (weakly) come close to Wrong 2. 

It is still hard to tell different fruits apart. It is impossible to know when something stinks and needs to be thrown out. Sometimes I get the subconscious idea that there is "something" in the air, for example when the supermarket has thrown out large amounts of spoiled food or when my partner is seasoning a cast iron pan. I get the "gut" reaction to it, but not the conscious knowledge of which smell it is.

I have been doing daily smell training, but the progress is slow. At this point, I doubt that my sense of smell will ever return to normal. 

Virus diary #8

 Day 8

Wednesday, 1.September. In two days, it will be our last day of confinement. We don't need to test again, but we need to go for 24 hours without any paracetamol or ibuprofen, and make sure that we don't have a fever in those 24 hours. I don't feel like I have a fever today, but my head is still spinning strangely, and it feels like gravity is affecting me differently. My ears feel blocked, but there is nothing blocking them. I can breathe perfectly well through my nose, but my sense of smell is broken.

Something really strange happened today. My SO was cleaning a pan with vinegar. When I entered the kitchen, I could taste the vinegar. Not smell, but taste, and it was very faint. The air was sour. Maybe this means that my sensory cells are starting to slowly regenerate.

I immediately started running around smelling everything. No luck. I think I can maybe smell vanilla, but it could also be that I just remember what vanilla is supposed to smell like. 

Little one is bored and irritable. We don't have a lot of energy to play with him, and that unfortunately means that he ends up watching YouTube between lunch and dinner most days. This means that he doesn't get to burn his energy. SO takes him into the bedroom to play rough for some time; they push each other around, jump on the bed, etc. The loud laughing and screaming makes my head and ears hurt so much that I cry while I wash up. There is just so much housework and so little energy. I try to wear my best face for the sake of my dear two boys.

The tea that tastes like WoW

I recently wrote about how smells can instantly trigger memories, and wondered if the same was also true for tastes. The two senses are after all closely related, large parts of what we perceive as taste comes from the nose.

I enjoy playing games, and while games like Ingress and Pokemon Go makes me go outside every day, it is more comfortable to sit inside and play World of Warcraft on a freezing October day like today. (Don't worry, i DID hack a portal today.) I have played WoW on/off since the beginning of the game, and often keep a cup of hot tea next to the computer while I play. Especially in the Burning Crusade area, I consumed large amounts of Chinese smoked tea.

Until this day, the taste of this tea makes me instantly think of WoW, especially a zone in Outland. The connection is so strong that when Warlords of Draenor came out, playing in the remade zone made me crave the same tea again.

When I sat down to play the game today, my SO made a cup of smoked tea for me and placed it next to my computer. It made the experience perfect. I believe that the familiar tea made me immerse myself even stronger in the game.