Severe recurrent blocked nose after Covid

Get a Stellate Ganglion Block (SGB) done. Cleveland Clinic Long-haulers ReCOVERY Clinic is having success with it, and I am too through the VA (I've had severe Long-haulers for over 3 years). One of our VA nurses suffered loss of taste and smell 2 &1/2 years, and she just had the SGB done and recovered full taste and smell immediately. Tell everyone!!!

Sorry to hear your SGBs aren't helping like they have for others! I find my recovery with the help of SGB has to be in concert with other modalities to reduce anxiety and esp to help with good sleep. How do you sleep? Getting consistent good sleep is one of my challenges which can undermine the great effects I've gained from just my first Stellate Ganglion Block 2 months back. After three years of always getting tremors, brain fog and migraines the SGB has started to break up the "dying sensation" cascade effect that C19 left my nervouse system habitually over-reacting too. I'm going to ask my doc for a CPAP to help me sleep better.

This was several years ago, so I’m not exactly sure on the time frame. I know it took a few months to start to see taste improvement.
This was long before I had Covid, so it was a different thing. I think it was brought on by my low B12, but I guess I can’t know for sure.
I didn’t have hair loss at that time.

I hope it is the answer for you.

I asked the Duke ENT doctor (He’s very experienced and highly rated) about the SG Block and he sort of moaned. He said I’d try to avoid that. I didn’t see the point in pressing the issue, since he was definitely not in favor of it. So, if I want to pursue it, I’ll have to find another provider.

I’m up to my eyeballs in specialists already with my Gastroenterologists, Ophthalmologists, Neurologist, Endocrinologist, and soon to be Rheumatologist. Plus, my parents are ailing right now and I’m doing major caregiver duties and getting them to doctor appointments that take me out of work multiple days a week. Of course, the bitter taste is a major deal. I have to make it a priority. If I knew it was on its way out, I could tolerate it easier.

Oddly, I do not appear congested (said doc) or feel it. I SOUND it. Constantly. Because I teach virtually, sounding like this is an impediment. If you're old enough to remember Lily Tomlin's character, Edith Ann, that's my voice now. It wasn't. I'm laughing as I type because the number of absurd symptoms w/ this is exhausting. (Oh the tinnitus is one of the worst - like an ocean in my head.)

I get how having your voice affected impacts you professionally. I struggle with that too. I keep clearing my throat and saying it’s allergies. Idk…is it? I had lots of congestion and nose pouring water Friday and yesterday. Today, it’s not so bad in upper respiratory area. Still have throat congestion, though. I’m going to try the nasal spray the ENT prescribed and then regroup.

@celia16, one of the 'joys' of this group is learning that any of us are not "the only one - no one else has mentioned THAT symptom before" - and I so appreciate what you wrote. When I'm teaching and my voice starts to go (sometimes entirely), I find ways to excuse it - allergies or "I've been on too many zoom meetings today using my voice" - and do my best to regroup w/ a froggy sound. It is troublesome -- and more because it's uncomfortable.

Is yours accompanied by tinnitus and/or "oceans in your ears"? When I've had sinus infections in the past, my ears never felt 'congested' - and never did I hear oceans!

The number of symptoms from having had this virus are stunning. The good is that now the med and science folks that have an official say agree that anything that occurred after a + COVID test, even if one's COVID symptoms were not severe and/or didn't cause hospitalizations, and last 3 months or more indicate Post-Covid or Long Covid or the misery we feel, eh?

I hope you find relief w/ the nose spray. I've yet to find any that change the symptoms or that cause my mouth to not have a rash-like reaction on my one inner cheek. (That's for the head-related stuff.) Resigning oneself to living like this is the challenge.

Here's to us and all feeling human and being heard.

I sleep just fine, but take several things to help me get there, like; Tylenol pm, Melatonin and Valarian Root. I sleep like a baby until my alarm goes off at 6;30 a.m. to take my Synthroid to help control my hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s. I will be going for my 5th Stellate Ganglion Block injection in August and fear it will again be for nothing. Loosing hope quickly.

Iḿ someone who has experienced a blocked nasal airway (without any physical obstruction visible to ENT doctors) after COVID, against a backdrop of no history of sinusitis or any other disorder that would tend to produce an unrelenting impedance of air flow. COVID did not cause or leave me with any loss of senses of taste or smell.

Importantly, though, my health history already included a number of amorphous disorders by the time I got COVID, and over time, I have come to see my health history as relevant to the way in which long COVID has manifested in me. When doctors across a range of specialties could not help me, I set out to attempt to get well on my own, and now, 6 months post-acute COVID, Iḿ on a regime that may be starting to improve my condition.

Once I realized that I would have to take charge of my recovery, the first thing I did was to taper or discontinue any of the long-term-use medications I was on that could have increased my susceptibility to chronic upper respiratory congestion/airway blockage, under the supervision of my primary care doctor. It turned out that 3 separate medications I had been taking for anywhere from 3 months to 20 years were all well known for causing chronic nasal congestion as a side effect. To be sure, the tapers of these drugs, and search for their replacements, with my doctor, has been mighty challenging, but for me, there is no turning back on this measure.

Believing that my long-term medications were not the cause of the dramatic blockage I have been experiencing, even if they had made me vulnerable to congestion severity, but also sensing that the strange ailments I´ve experienced since childhood might indicate a lifelong underlying nutritional malabsorption syndrome, I was quickly led to learn that there is a cadre of long-COVID researchers who are noticing that the whole panoply of long COVID manifestations bear an uncanny resemblance to chronic (but subacute) thiamine/B1 deficiency (due either to malabsorption or under-consumption of foods rich in this vitamin). In the community that focuses on B1, the theme of neurological malfunction features prominently. Sure enough, my history included a diagnosis of dysautonomia. And thanks to the late Cleveland Clinic physician Derrick Lonsdale, there is now a large body of research and writing available on repletion of thiamine as a method for addressing the various disorders that cluster to form dysautonomia. After learning as much as I could about B1 repletion protocols, I started on a protocol which, in my case, has necessitated very, very slow and gradual B1 repletion. Two B1 protocols impress me the most, and these are the ones published by UK functional medicine practitioner Elliot Overton and the one that is popular among patients attempting to arrest their Parkinsonś Disease.

B1 repletion, if it is to work at all, can be a long journey, and so my next priority was to find non-pharmaceutical solutions (since a boatload of pharmaceuticals had only made me worse) that could improve my breathing as I await deeper change. I now have entire moving-storage containers of both pharmaceutical and herbal nasal sprays and systemic/oral nutraceuticals and herbs that I have tried, AT LENGTH, without success, but 6 months of intense trial and error have led me to a combination of items that seems to be giving me more hours each day of normal or nearly normal breathing through my nose. CAVEAT: I am not home free yet by any means, but I am finally getting hopeful. My palliative supplements follow, and nb.: At least one of these (NAC), in my view, is potentially not only palliative, but is, beyond that, possibly as deep-acting in resetting my nervous and respiratory systems as B1 may prove to be:

Proteolytic enzymes (serrapeptase, nattokinase, and combination proteolytics that include trypsin and chymotrypsin (which are in the same class of proteolytics as serrapeptase))

NAC (a precursor to glutathione shown, in a massive number of studies, to yield powerful antioxidant benefits; NAC has recently been lauded by long-COVID researchers at Yale Medical School who have documented their clinical findings that NAC seems to make a significant difference for long-haulers whose primary problems are fatigue and brain fog. I do not have those problems, but NAC is used even in orthodox medicine as a mucolytic, and so this feature alone has indicated its potential benefit for patients with both upper and lower respiratory congestion and blockages, not to mention that NAC is highly regarded, in the complementary medicine fields, as useful in depression and anxiety, which seems to develop in nearly all of us who are dealing with long COVID.)

Hydroxytyrosol (aka HXT) (an emerging antioxidant derived from olive oil that is currently in use by doctors in Italy who specialize in treating long COVID, and who have published favorable results in a small clinical trial with the use of HXT taken together with acetyl-l-carnitine and low-dose B complex)

Finally, because I have suffered from intermittent severe dry eye for over 25 years, I am borrowing an ophthalmic remedy that has often helped me, in hopes that it may finally provide moisture, albeit indirectly, for my truly dessicated nasal passages: Muro 128 hypertonic oinment. Muro ointment is my eye doctorś go-to for patients like me who have a history of mild recurrent corneal erosion, and so when I pause using it, I am reminded of how protective it can be for sensitive corneas. Since I cannot tolerate saline nasal sprays or any salve produced for topical use in nostrils (and these all make me worse), I am counting on the excess biological fluid drawn out of my corneas by the Muro ointment reaching my nasal passages via the distal opening of my nasolacrimal ducts, and, thereby, moisturizing my nose and warming the air that I breathe in. (To my delight, I think this may actually be working, at least a bit, as planned!)

In hopes of getting truly well again some time soon, I have also started walking very long distances every day, as I have a strong intuitive sense that COVID, when it met my dysautonomia and all of its component disorders, seriously weakened the effectiveness of all the neurotransmitters and hormones in my body somehow, making me feel that it can only help to keep trying to ¨raise my energy level up¨ in as many ways as possible. Very light aerobic exercise, like walking, turns out to be a perfect ¨sport¨ for a relative weakling like me. And for what it is worth, on the days when I bump into friends while walking, I forget about my breathing challenge for a while. Getting reminded of what itś like to feel normal definitely contributes to my motivation to keep striving.

Have you tried L-Thenine?