My Sensitive Nose

We all have encountered a different way in which our lives changed due to COVID-19. Some bigger and more serious than others, but we all can agree that our lives have changed. Here is how mine has. My family’s genetics did not bless us with a particularly good sense of smell. If anything, we have been cursed for generations with swollen nostril airways that have caused many surgeries to allow us to thoroughly enjoy the pure stank of the world. 

Now, that I have given you the backstory of what it is like to have bad nasal genetics, I would like to move to something that could make it worse. Weekly COVID testing. 

Being an athlete, I had to be COVID tested weekly just to participate in practice and then get tested twice in a week for games. If not for my love for basketball I would not have been putting myself through the struggle of having a constant runny nose while doing anything on the court or getting two bloody noses and having a stretch of two weeks where my nose and cheekbones felt like I was just punched in the face. Some days I felt like I could smell everything that I had been missing out on and on others I could not smell anything (which is a sign for COVID, so I had to be tested again.) 

Overall, the seven-month process of getting my brain cleaned by cotton swabs weekly could have been worse if I did ever test positive but luckily, I did not. Since my season is now over, I am interested in seeing if somehow my nose changes even more after it had gone through a seven-month weekly interrogation. Maybe I could experience that thing scientist’s talk about with gaining more of another sense when one disappears.