Helen’s Story: Anosmia, Parosmia, Hyposmia to Today
Helen’s ears pricked up when she heard how people with Covid 19 were experiencing problems with smell and taste. This brought back unhappy memories from a time, some twenty years previously, when Helen found herself in the same situation. Back then, there was little or no information for those struggling with olfactory issues. Delighted to hear about the work of Fifth Sense, Helen was kind enough to make contact and share her story.
We are grateful to Helen for sharing, not least because her experience is a little unusual. It shows how much we still have to learn about the workings of the olfactory senses and why further research is required.
Helen was working as an academic librarian when, in 1998 aged forty, she went down with a bad case of seasonal flu. Unfortunately, the whole family got it, with her parents, husband and three-year-old daughter experiencing the same symptoms. Helen was confined to bed for several days during December. Afterwards, she spent additional time recuperating on the sofa while trying to amuse a youngster, who, predictably, was recovering faster than any of them!
It took a good couple of weeks before Helen was back on her feet. Thereafter though, she and her parents struggled further with bad sinusitis. Helen recalls a constant yellow/green mucus requiring multiple boxes of tissues.
Helen is aware that olfactory loss can sometimes be attributed to viral infections. Influenza is of course viral. As regards the sinusitis, Helen was keen to point out that, neither she nor her father had antibiotics, while her mother did. The course of their illnesses was identical, supporting the view of Helen’s GP that the sinusitis was also viral.
At this point, you might imagine Helen would be telling us about the onset of a post-viral smell disorder. Yet no, all remained well. In fact, a couple of months later Helen had an IVF cycle and conceived twins! Her early pregnancy was non-eventful with no significant nausea. She had cravings for fried onions, Thai food and the occasional Burger King. At twenty-eight weeks, huge and tired and with bouts of heartburn, she stopped work.
It was now the end of August. On Helen’s first day of maternity leave she stocked up the freezer. Yet from that moment on, everything Helen cooked smelt and tasted vile. She takes up the story.
“I had been fine the day before. A friend came to lunch and reassured me that the food was lovely. To me it tasted absolutely disgusting. Memories are hazy after all these years, but I recall horrible metallic flavours. The flavours problem persisted and I convinced myself it was due to pregnancy and, like the heartburn, it would go as soon as I had given birth. Imagine my disappointment when this was not the case. Luckily, as I was breastfeeding, high carbohydrate foods were relatively acceptable. But the taste of more ‘healthy’ foods was very unpredictable.”
Helen was suffering from smell distortion, or parosmia. This is common with post-viral olfactory loss. Parosmia can have terrible effects on everyday lives, not just with food but often by distorting smells that ordinarily, like fragrances for example, should be pleasant. Meanwhile, Helen’s accompanying anosmia hit hard on an emotional level. “I couldn’t smell my babies, which made me very sad as I remembered the lovely new baby smell of my older daughter.”
Busy mum Helen eventually found time to go to her GP. He referred her for a CT scan and prescribed several months of Mometasone spray. The CT scan brought reassurance that nothing was materially wrong, but the spray had no discernible effect on her smell issues. “I found it distressing, but as I was fully occupied with three small children, I didn’t have much time to dwell on it. I can understand how, in these times of great uncertainty with Covid, it will be very different for people experiencing similar, or much worse, problems.”
Self-management became the order of the day for Helen. “I avoided foods that tasted bad and relied a lot on memory, texture and intense flavours to get some enjoyment from eating.”
Thankfully, Helen’s parosmia slowly abated. “The last foods to return to ‘normal’ were strawberries and cucumber which took a couple of years.” Equally, her ability to smell and taste, particularly her sense of smell, improved during the years that followed.
The pandemic saw Helen reappraise what happened all those years ago. “Until Covid I hadn’t really thought much about what I had experienced. I put it down to the juxtaposition of flu and pregnancy hormones. However, I am intrigued that it took from February, when my sinusitis ended, until late August for the symptoms to emerge. Maybe it was coincidence. I am pretty confident I would have noticed them earlier had they been present.”
While Helen’s experience was somewhat unusual, we do know that the onset of post-viral smell loss is not always sudden. Post-viral loss is the cause of anosmia in 12% of cases. It tends to be more common in females between the ages of 40 and 70, although the reasons for this aren’t clear.
These days Helen, now in her early sixties, is fine, albeit with reservations. “I am not sure whether my abilities to smell or taste are as good as previously. Sometimes I can be caught out if I am confronted with something I have never eaten before. Afterwards, I’m not sure if I have actually ‘tasted’ it, especially if the people I’m with start discussing what we have eaten! Also, I don’t feel confident judging whether food is ‘off’ or not, but I can now smell gas if the hob fails to ignite.”
Helen may be exhibiting signs of hyposmia, a reduction in olfactory abilities. Whether this is due to her earlier problems or whether, as is often the case, this is down to ageing, we cannot be sure.
We’ll leave the last word to Helen.
“I was so pleased to read about Fifth Sense. Back in 1999 I couldn’t find out anything about what I was experiencing. At the time I would have welcomed some information and support.”
