JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — 57-year-old Mindy Katzman had COVID over a year ago and she says she hasn’t been the same since.
“I still do not have a sense of taste or smell in the morning hours. I usually can not develop a since of taste until around 11:30 in the morning,” said Katzman.
Those aren’t the only symptoms she suffers. Katzman says her energy is low, she lost a significant amount of weight, and she has memory loss.
“It's terribly frustrating, very scary, and it’s always a fear of what’s going to potentially happen next," said Katzman.
Katzman says her biggest challenge is finding answers to her long hauling COVID symptoms.
“When you contract a virus that’s going to invade your upper respiratory tract, viruses like COVID or influenza or even certain common viruses, what they are going to do is they go in and attack certain cells and if its attacking cells in your nose, mouth, or throat its going to cause inflammation. That inflammation can lead to destruction of those cells and most of those cells are involved in those senses," said Dr. Chirag Patel, assistant chief medical officer at UF Health Jacksonville.
Patel says if you lost a sense of taste you can try to treat the underlying cause of it which could be dry mouth. By practicing good oral hygiene or throat lozenges.
If you lost a sense of smell and have a dry nasal tract he says you can try using nasal saline.
“The concept here is simple, COVID attacked your immune system it attacked certain organ systems in your body and it weakened them, and now if you get reinfected your body has a harder time fighting it off and those organ systems that are already weakened are now more exposed then they were before. So it's easier for the COVID virus then to impact them," said Patel.
UF Health has a COVID restore treatment program to support COVID long haulers. You click here to learn about the program and sign up.