vax

[rushthatspeaks]

At forty-eight hours past my first Pfizer shot, I am very tired and rather brain-foggy. Yesterday I was not tracking sentences very well; today I think I am, but can't guarantee that this says what I think it does. My arm is only sore when bumped, also an improvement over yesterday. The odd thing is that random specific, individual muscles are extremely sore, and not ones I've ever injured or have significant weakness in, either. Just, like, a random leg muscle. A something very precise in my back. I've never had a fever, which is nice, and at the rate things are improving I expect to be at least vaguely functional tomorrow.


When friends and family have gotten vaccinated, my pattern so far has been to congratulate them and then to go off somewhere and quietly experience all the emotions I had apparently been having at the prospect of said people becoming ill and possibly dying, now that said emotions are not immediately relevant. I did wonder if this was going to happen about myself, upon getting the shot, but I didn't think it would, both because the fear of illness and death for me personally has felt very abstract-- I suspect I have been holding it at a distance, but also, no one I have come in face-to-face contact with has gotten sick that we know of-- and also because philosophically I am far out on one end of the bell curve that I generally label 'cultural fear of death'. It's not suicidality, but rather a deep belief that death is a natural part of life which can be dealt with in healthy ways a lot of the time. If someone offered to make me immortal, I would turn them down, and I do not particularly understand the desire to live forever. So I did not think I would Have Emotions about my own vaccination.

I was partly correct. Apparently, what I was scared of was not death, which, as I mentioned, bothers me more about other people than about myself. What I seem to have been scared of is the concept of, temporarily or permanently, losing my sense of smell.

Yeah, I was bone-deep petrified over that one. The entire concept disturbs me viscerally. I am both clinically hyperosmic and C-PTSD hypervigilant, and I seem to use smell in ways I had never recognized before this fear-- because the thoughts that go with the fear have not been 'how would I tell if food is spoiled', or 'how could I tell if the catbox needs changing', though that was there, but 'how would I know where I am in a room' and 'how would I know whether I am right-side-up or upside-down'.

Because I guess smell forms a massive, mostly unnoticed part of my kinesthesia and spatial awareness?

I mean, I can tell which room of our apartment I am in from scent alone, which I thought was fairly standard, but also which side of the room I'm on, which probably isn't? I can't navigate without sight in a room, because I bump into furniture, because furniture is not strongly scented, but I seem to triangulate using the place my box of perfume is stored to get myself down the stairs to the bathroom without my glasses in the middle of the night, and I can tell if the cats are in the room with me without looking. And I can give you an exhaustive discussion of our downstairs neighbor's cooking habits, but I had not realized that the occasional weed someone else in our building smokes subliminally determines where I sit in our living room. (Not fond of the smell of weed; dank really is the most correct adjective.)

The concept of losing access to all that spatial information sounds rather like becoming a ghost in my own life.

Also, I am genuinely uncertain I'd be able to eat without a sense of smell. Like, at all. I have only ever gotten food poisoning from food I was forced to eat as a child when people wouldn't listen to me about it. If I stopped being able to tell, it would be hard to make myself eat, because I suspect everything would ping as suspicious.

It's a minor fear, compared to a lot of other pandemic and political fears of recent years, but it is a legitimate relief to have it lifted.

This does put more weight on a different fear, though, which is that one reason I have not pursued hormonal treatment (yet) for my Gender Issues is that everyone says T reduces your sense of smell and I just do not know how to cope with that on any level. Sigh. I... really don't know how to get around that one.

Ah well. Relief of fear in some direction is positive.

Comments

[redbird]

While that's not my perception of the world--I don't have as strong a sense of smell, or rely on it as much as you do--I understand why you're relieved not to be worrying about losing your sense of smell, and it's good to hear.

[sovay]

Just, like, a random leg muscle. A something very precise in my back.

Not with my first shot, but with my second, I experienced random joint pain such that yesterday morning I got out of bed and almost fell over because my right knee had decided in the night that I had secretly suffered a sports injury and weight-bearing was not on its to-do list today. I went back to bed and my knee was normal by the time I woke up, but my right elbow and various bones in both of my hands experimented with the concept of RSI until bedtime. This afternoon I played pseudo-tennis with my niece and the only impediment besides fatigue was that the vaccine site of my left shoulder still hurt. I got nothing.

What I seem to have been scared of is the concept of, temporarily or permanently, losing my sense of smell.

That makes sense to me. I have been terrified of it myself. I have also been terrified of surviving with permanent damage to other systems of my body, because enough of me has sustained irreparable injury over the years that I really don't want any more, but even normal impairment from colds is disorienting and upsetting to me and the nasal spray I was tried on for exactly one dose back in the deep time of March 2020 was no go because it did not just delete my sense of smell, it scrambled it, and I had a panic attack in the shower because everything smelled wrong, including the cats, my live-in husband, and me. For the record, if anyone tries to put you on ipratropium bromide, you should probably say no.

I had no idea that was true of T. That is difficult.

I am so glad you are being vaccinated. I love you very much.

[eccentric_hat]

It is the most anecdotal of stories, but the fanwriter known as gyzym who tweets at dylan_thyme is a trans man who was born without a sense of smell and suddenly got one when he started T. He had mentioned his anosmia intermittently back on tumblr, because people always had questions about it, and for his part he found smell a rather mysterious superpower that everyone around him had--and then suddenly it became available to him. This isn't the thread where he first talked about it, but it's the one that I was able to find just now (tweeted upon one of the occasions when JK Rowling was terrible last year, but the thread mostly doesn't directly address that).

[thistleingrey]

Tinnitus is a thing I'm glad I haven't had so far for much the same set of reasons that you describe re: smell. I can hear whether a window is open even when there's no noise from the (very boringly residential) street outside.

Also, yay, vaccine!

[nineweaving]

So thankful you've had vaccination one. I've been worried for a year about your sense of smell, and I didn't even know the extent of it. I just knew that it's essential to your being.

Love.

Nine

[mrissa]

I am still terrified of losing my sense of smell, since I don't have the vaccine appointment yet and I also use my sense of smell to navigate. So solidarity, and glad you have your first dose.

[larryhammer]

I am currently 40 hours after my first Pfizer shot. My upper arm is still sore but improving, but that's the least of my concerns because at about 28 hours I got whammed with other symptoms: loggy body, brain fog, and an upset stomach. How much of the fog is from that and how much that I had a wretched night with less than 4 hours of sleep (after several days of not quite enough sleep) is hard to tell.

Technically I'm at work, but I suspect I should go lie down for a while.

[lilysea]

Thank you for sharing your vaccine experiences! ^_^

I recently had my first Pfizer, so I'm interested in reading other people's experiences.

I'm at day 6 post first-dose and still feeling crappy

today I felt okay-ish while lying flat on my back

but brainfogged and struggling to read

and whenever I stood up I felt dizzy and exhausted and VERY unwell

also still feeling feverish

[lilysea]

It was interesting to read about your relationship to smells, mine is quite different

I am hyperosmic [and also C-PTSD hypervigilant], and if someone offered me a safe and side-effect-free way to reduce my sense of smell to that of most statistically median non-smokers, I would take it.

Smell = a MAJOR migraine trigger for me, I really struggle in buses and trains and lifts and shopping centres from all the spray on deodorant / body spray / perfume etc etc

I actually have to avoid going anywhere near certain shops or certain locations because of smell,

and even before COVID, I always tried to avoid face-to-face contact with posties or delivery drivers or couriers because their spray on deodorant / bodyspray = migraine.

and my partner has to use fragrance free shampoo/conditioner/soap/laundry liquid for my sake,

and if he catches a rush-hour train, he has to wash his hair and shower and change into a completely new set of clothes before I can hug him without getting a migraine from all the deodorant/perfume he will have absorbed on the train

[athenais]

I am glad your sense of smell has not been impinged on. Also, I am glad you are being vaccinated.

[oracne]

Hooray for vaccination!

I, too, was afraid of losing my sense of smell, and mine is nowhere near as acute as yours.

[al_zorra]

Smell for me is a major operating system for doing so much, such as cooking, cleaning, washing, knowing what the weather is doing and will do, so on and so forth. So ya, I get that fear.

[landingtree]

I'd never imagined having a sense of smell that useful. I'm very glad yours is now protected -- and you in general, too!