Does anybody have the same « disorders » I have ?

I had COVID about five years ago, and ever since then I’ve lost my sense of smell. And when I say I can’t smell, I mean I smell absolutely nothing. I don’t mean that everything smells like nothing in comparaison to a smell. I don’t mean that everything smells like air, or that everything smells neutral, or that everything smells like « nothing » as though « nothing » were itself a smell. There is simply no smell sensation at all.

The best comparison I can make is with the way people sometimes describe blindness. A person who has never been able to see doesn’t necessarily experience their vision as a permanent black screen. Black is still something you see. What I’m trying to describe is closer to the absence of the sense itself. That’s what smell is like for me. There is no smell to perceive, no matter what’s around me. If someone is smoking right next to me, I don’t smell cigarette smoke. If someone sprays perfume or air freshener, I don’t smell perfume or air freshener. If someone is cooking, I don’t smell the food. There is just nothing. But here’s the strange part. After five years of living in this complete absence of smell, I’ve noticed that I can sometimes tell when something has entered that « nothingness. »For example, if someone is smoking right next to me, I can’t smell the cigarette at all, but I can somehow tell that the air is no longer nothing. I can’t identify what it is. I can’t say « that’s cigarette smoke »because I don’t actually smell it. I just suddenly become aware that something is there. The same thing happens if someone sprays a strong air freshener in a bathroom and I walk in shortly afterwards. I still can’t smell the air freshener, but I can tell that something is present in the air.

I’ve started describing this to myself almost as if different smells have different « weights ». The stronger or more intense the smell would presumably be, the more noticeable this strange sensation is for me. I don’t know if I’m actually sensing something physical about the air, or whether I’m perceiving irritation or another sensation through a different sensory system. I genuinely have no idea. I just know that I can sometimes detect the presence of something without being able to smell or identify it.

And I’ve noticed something similar with taste. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to properly taste food anymore. Most things are extremely bland because I don’t get the smell component that normally contributes so much to flavour. However, I’ve somehow adapted to being able to recognize certain tastes when they’re extremely concentrated. As in, I can sometimes tell that something is salty, sweet, or sour, but I need a ridiculous amount of it. And even then, it isn’t necessarily the normal experience of tasting it. It’s more like I’m recognizing the physical sensation it creates in my mouth. Salt produces one kind of sensation, sour things produce another kind of sting, and very concentrated sweet things produce another sensation. So I can distinguish them based partly on those sensations. The problem is that I have to use much more salt, sugar, etc. than someone with a normal sense of taste would need to actually notice them, which obviously isn’t great for my health. I’ve mostly just adapted by eating food that other people would probably consider extremely bland.

So I’m wondering if anyone else is experiencing the same thing as me