Anybody have noticed things smell odd !
Smell: Anybody have noticed things smell odd ! - PMRGCAuk
Smell
Written by
Uglow
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34 Replies
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Best take a Covid test!
Uglow• in reply to
Negative I’m not sick it’s been like this for weeks
After Covid my taste was weird for months. Others report the same for smell. There are various other causes such as sinus infections. This gives a list
nidcd.nih.gov/health/smell-...
There is a podcast about parosmia after Covid in the Guardian
I haven’t had covid x
Maybe you did but very asymptomatically.
One out of three cases has no symptoms, or just one...like smell, or taste! That’s why it spreads so easily as those people don’t get tested!! Could be some of your unusual symptoms that appear to be unusual in PMR are that...! Are you doing regular twice a week home lateral flow tests...good idea to do one!
I believe I had COVID in very late 2019/early 2020 before the full nature of the pandemic had been recognised and 'everyday' tests were unknown. I had a cold and a cough, during which I lost my sense of smell and only thanks to a friend living upstairs did I avoid filling the house with smoke - from things I had cooking/burning on the hob and simply couldn't smell. I had never before experienced that with a cold. (Incidentally, I later decided that if I had had a form of COVID I had probably been saved by Prednisolone from one of the worst symptoms of COVID - a mighty inflammation of the system - which was puzzling medics at that time).
Then, as people were dying from COVID in their millions all over the globe, I became embarrassed to talk about it because it seemed a kind of empty boast to say I thought I had had it and a waste of everybody's time for me to get an antibodies test. And then I more or less forgot it.
In the past few months I have discovered I have lost some areas of my ability to smell things.
Not all, as far as I know - I haven't done proper 'tests' - and my taste seems to be OK, but, rather worryingly I have discovered this loss because I have not sensed what I am told is a sewage-type smell of varying strength in a building I am partly responsible for*
And no - it's not friends 'having me on'.
I spent a couple of hours in the company of an experienced man who had worked for many years on such things. He and a colleague plumber could smell it but just could not work out where it was coming from. I could smell nothing.
Unlike you, I haven't been aware of any 'strange' smells - but then, who knows which range of smells I can't smell at all now!
So, as others have suggested - you might have had COVID in the early days - but, alternatively, you (and I) may just be enduring the changes in the senses that I have read take place as people get older.
*the thinking now is that dead rats were the probable cause - but oh how I wish that I could have smelt it, awful as it is.
I have had phantom smells off and on since starting on pred. Most usually a whiff of distant bonfires! Goes with the diminution/change in sense of taste, I guess.
My sense of smell is far more acute than other members of my family soft cheese in the fridge, distant burning etc. Can’t remember if this pre-dates diagnosis. No time to ponder then.
Same here, Jane. We were in the car yesterday and I could smell burning leaves-phewee! Husband could smell nothing.
Me too, drives my family mad, however it comes in handy for tracking things that need chucking out or sorting out, I can even smell some illnesses, all very bizarre. This has always part of my life, nothing to do with GCA or medication.Xx
Yep me too. People who are ill smell weird to me, particularly poorly controlled diabetes. I can smell far more than most people.
I have something that if I see something say on TV I will smell it for about a second. It started off when I saw a guinea pig and I had a whiff of guinea pig. It rarely happens with food but things like sawn wood or sea smells. Most odd. It just happens occasionally and lasts about a second.
Just for interest piglette, do you see numbers in colour does each number have a colour?
What, if I read it in a paper or see it on TV? I am not aware of it. I am very bad at recognising people though. Seeing a film is hopeless as I never know who anyone is! I would be a hopeless police witness.
Unless the culprit had a very particular odour. 😉
piglette.. have you had that all your life or just with prednisone. oh and I see Sheffield Jane is asking the same question I was about to ask.
It is fairly recently I have become aware of it. It was just that I saw this hamster in straw on TV and I had this incredibly strong smell of hamster! Then I noticed it happening with other things too. Only occasionally and for a very short space of time.
Synesthesia. I have it. I remember passwords by the colour of the numbers. I perceive numbers as having a consistent colour. It can affect other senses.
I love this. I hope it isn't unnerving or annoying.. its seems a romantic thing to have!! I never liked certain letters and numbers...and really liked others for no reason....
It’s my super power! 😁
When I was on higher doses of Pred I found that there was a strange smell - sort of like wet dog - which I eventually decided was actually me! 😳It went as I got lower on Pred.
Me too SusyTe. Not wet dog exactly, but when I started on 40 mgs Pred I couldn't stand my deodorant any more - made me want to throw up. Changed to one of those rock crystal ones. Then I noticed the awful smell of beetroot in a sealed pack in my fridge. There was nothing wrong with it, just smelled really nasty to me so had to bin it, and I couldn't walk down the laundry cleaning aisle in the supermarket. It went away as my dose went down but came back when I had to increase again after a flare. Weird.
I had similar during chemo bread 🤮pred reminds me so much of chemo
Not a great thing to be reminded of I bet. 😕
Definitely not 😢
I have that too 😳Apparently no one else can smell it - thankfully xx
Funnily enough I have been having odd smells come over me for some years now. Been on steroids for 3years but never linked the two. My husband laughs at me as he can’t smell anything. Often a sort of musty smell or smells I can’t quite put my finger on.
If it is linked I’d love to know the science behind it.
I think my skin has a chemical smell after my Tocilizumab jab. My husband can’t smell it.
Years ago I used Zicam sticks in my nose against a common cold. This was zinc. Well it helped with the cold but left me for a long time with an altered sense of smell. I thought I smelt smoke coming from my computer. Or if I smell something in the morning I will smell it all day especially food. I ended up going to ENT Doctor Who told me to try also alphalipoic acid 500 mg for 6 months. It did help but my sense of smell never returned to what it was before I used the Zicam.
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