I'm Healed, after 4 years.

I hadn’t used Reddit for about 2 years, but I reinstalled it just to say: I’m healed.

I was one of those people who had completely lost hope. I suffered from severe parosmia, and none of the treatments doctors suggested worked for me. For three years, I saw no improvement at all. No one understood what I was going through. Instead, people mocked me and called me drama queen. On top of parosmia, dealing with that lack of understanding took a huge toll on my mental health.

Even though I was already skinny, I lost 6 more kilos because of parosmia and literally became nothing but skin and bones. I only ate with a nose clip—just enough to keep myself from starving. But after three years, I slowly started noticing signs of improvement, and now, after four years, I can say that I’m completely healed.

Before parosmia, I was actually a bit of a picky eater. But now, after going through all of this, I don’t dislike any food anymore and I can eat anything. Even the worst foods now taste better to me than the most “tolerable” foods I could eat during parosmia.

I was never into perfumes before, but now I pay a lot more attention to the scents people wear, and I also use perfume way more than I used to. And because I now truly appreciate this blessing of getting back my senses, I’ve started cooking different meals every day and trying new foods.

Parosmia also made me a deeper and more understanding person. It taught me to be more empathetic toward struggles I haven’t personally experienced and to be much less judgmental.

So in my case, "what didn’t kill me made me stronger." Even though I don’t generally believe in that phrase, it turned out to be true for me in this situation.

I wrote this for those who have lost hope—to tell you not to give up. Just be patient. It seems that the only real cure for this condition is time.