SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – With the rising prevalence of the BA.5 variant, experts are encouraging more boosting and masking, just as so many are embracing summer with uncovered faces.
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But for those who have already contracted the virus and still feeling the long-term effects, some summer pleasures – the smell of fresh cut grass or breezes at the beach, the taste of watermelon or barbeque – aren't what they should be.
Those suffering long COVID-19 are hoping their experience, the loss of their sense of smell and/or taste, will convince people to take up that mask again.
Myrka Morales, 26, has three roommates in a small San Francisco house near the Daly City border. Except they weren't home last year when she was toasting frozen waffles while getting ready for work.
"I hear every alarm in the house start yelling, 'Fire, fire, fire,'" she said. "I come out of the bathroom and sure enough, the kitchen is full of smoke."
"I couldn't smell anything, I didn't realize that the toaster oven had caught on fire," said Morales. "At first I laughed, and then I called my boyfriend and I cried."
Morales had what she called a "full-on meltdown," because she couldn't believe how she, an adult, was unaware of a fire in her house because she couldn't smell the smoke.
"How can I live on my own, I almost set the house on fire," she said.
Morales had suffered just a mild bout of COVID-19. But even that mild case had left her with no taste and smell. That was a year and a half ago.
She keeps the toaster, burned waffles and all, under the back porch as a reminder of what is lost.
For her, it's the loss of smell that is the most significant.
"I just want to smell my mom," she said. "If I never taste again, I'll be okay."
And as the months drag on since she lost that essential sense, she's starting to stop hoping for the day it will come back, and instead face the new normal in this part of her life.
She prefers cold drinks and crunchy foods, which are easier to gauge the constituency of.
"I can feel when something is light and heavy, but I can't tell you what it tastes like," she said.
One of her usual meals in the morning now is oatmeal, but at this point her body no longer craves certain foods.
This can sometimes lead to insensitive comments from others, who say that if they couldn't taste or smell they'd lose weight. "I'd be so skinny, oh, I would be so fit," said Morales of the types of things she hears. "Do you just eat salads all day?"
She's now selective about who she tells – it becomes a game of social niceties. "There are these little conversations in life I just can’t have anymore," she said.
But the most frustrating conversations come with those that are supposed to have answers. Morales has been to multiple doctors over the last year and a half who weren’t able to explain what was going on, or when it might end.
"I had a medical professional say to me, 'I don’t know,'" she said.
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