CARBONDALE (WSIL)---In November 2020, Anne Preston found out she had COVID-19.
"I was pretty much diagnosed on Thanksgiving. I had the sore throat, and mild fever, and I just knew that something was up," she recalled.
After recovering from the virus, Preston woke up one morning to find that once her sense of smell returned---it wasn't necessarily for the better.
"All of a sudden I started having this like crazy, rotten smell coming back instead of what should normally smell like chicken, or meat or different dishes," Preston tells News 3. "They didn't smell right."
Preston developed parosmia, which is becoming a more common long term effect of COVID.
"Nerves are nothing more than electrical wires, so basically in parosmia what's happening is the electrical wire, the nerve that runs from the nose to the brain is sending a staticy signal. So it's not a crisp, electrical signal, it's getting interrupted and jumbled, and the brain doesn't know how to interpret that so it can give you some weird signals," said Dr. Jeff Ripperda.
Some cases of parosmia can make certain items smell wrong, but for many who have had COVID--the smell registers as something rotten.
Preston said the condition negatively impacted her daily life.
"You'd be like in a certain situation, you be at a Starbucks and you'd wanna run out because you couldn't handle the smell, and that was a miserable experience. You know, you get to go to those places all the time, and then all of a sudden, it's no fun anymore," said Preston.
Preston had parosmia for around 2 months, and is now encouraging everyone to do their best to avoid contracting COVID-19 and the symptoms she experienced.
"Our bodies are incredible and our bodies are resilient, and my body was able to fix itself, and get back to my normal self after a couple of months, but I would definitely say that fear is still there and I don't want anyone that I know or anyone out there to ever get COVID because it's not a fun experience," said Preston.
