Suffering and lost taste/smell
I have been struggling since July - it started out as a dry cough and slight sore throat, nothing too crazy.
After 2 weeks of that, it progressed into a very mucousy cough which reminded me of the one time I had COVID in January 2022 so I assumed I was battling a long case of COVID. About a week after that came the nasal symptoms and I was not only coughing up yellow mucous, I was also blowing it out of my nose. I did Neti Pot nasal rinses twice per day along with Mucinex FastMax and Flonase which helped. By about a month in to all this, I lost my sense of taste and smell. Mid-August, I visited my family medicine doctor and he put me on a round of Augmentin (one week) and some medication that was supposed to suppress my cough (can’t remember the name). None of that worked. After symptoms only got worse, I went back to the same doctor after 2 weeks (end of August) and he said he was “stumped” but suggested I visit an ENT and try another round of the same antibiotics. I waited another 2 weeks to get seen by an ENT. In the meantime, I discovered Zyrtec D which helped me a lot for a couple of weeks and then it kindof tapered off. Somewhere in this frame of time, my nasal congestion went away and I was really just coughing up the mucous now, but still couldn’t taste or smell.
Finally got in with the ENT. He examined me and said there was “puss” present in the far back of my left sinus cavity and took a sample and sent it off to the lab, hoping that it might be bacterial so that we could actually treat it. In the meantime, he put me on a 2-week, 2 pill per day dose of Augmentin. Waited a week to get labs results back and they didn’t show anything unfortunately. Antibiotics didn’t help either. He also prescribed prednisone, which didn’t help either. He recommended a CT scan of my sinuses to rule out cysts or a deviated septum. That’s scheduled for October 12. The biggest part for me is that the ENT said that if this is just post-viral chronic sinusitis (which is his best guess at this point), my sense of smell/taste my never come back, or it may take up to a year to come back. Has anyone ever experienced this?? Right now, every morning starts with some pretty gnarly coughing where I have to cough up little bits of yellow mucous and then by around 11am that subsides and then it’s just a feeling of pressure throughout my sinuses all day (not really pain, oddly enough, which is what I remembered a sinus infection feeling like) and no taste or smell which is the most frustrating part. Help!! Would love to know if anyone has tips for what to do going forward- I am absolutely miserable!! Oh - one last thing, in the last few days I’ve tried Nasonex and rubbing Castor Oil on the insides of my nostrils. But not sure any of that is doing anything because I don’t really have much nasal congestion overall, just inflammation and the chest cough with mucous. Looking into red light therapy for my sinuses - ANYTHING to help me at this point I’m desperate!