Tastes Like

Two months post-immunotherapy, I got Covid. When I got the melanoma diagnosis, I never really asked, “Why me?” I thought: Fair. Years of tanning beds and baby oil and sun worshipping. Okay, Karma. But Covid? Nope. Fuck that. I wore my mask. I washed my hands. I stayed home. I got the vaccine. I sanitized shopping carts, and seat belts, and gas pumps and anything else that might have been contaminated by germy hands. When my husband came home from traveling, I sanitized his suitcase even as he rolled his eyes and poo-poo’ed my efforts to keep us safe. Easy for him to laugh and make light of my diligence, as it wasn’t his mortality that had been on the line for the last year. It wasn’t his body getting pumped full of drugs that unmasked melanoma while wreaking god knows what other kind of havoc on my body.

Caution aside, here we are. Covid warriors. He got a cold and a cough. I got a fever, a head that feels like it was stuffed with Styrofoam, aches, chills, debilitating fatigue, shortness of breath, and no sense of smell and taste.

Funny thing, that no sense of smell. I have a long and complicated relationship with this particular sense. I love so many smells…baking cookies, and simmering soups, and baby heads fresh from the bath. My youngest child wrapped up in her “night-night” who smelled always like warmth and breast milk. My husband’s cologne lingering on his shirts that I wear to bed when…