Anosmia

Meaning: a lack of functioning olfaction, or in other words, an inability to perceive odors. I've been plagued with this condition for periods in my life due to sinus conditions, and let me tell you, it stinks.

I'm motivated to write this today because this latest cold has killed my sense of smell again.  And with that, the ability to taste anything subtler than thai chili paste. I was making a chicken dish last night and snipped some tarragon to add to it. I chewed on a few leaves and thought: my tarragon is a dud! What happened? It was like I was eating a piece of grass. I asked my resident taster, Henry, to chew on some and tell me what he thought. He was at a loss to describe it but definitely tasted something. ("Not really  mint, but green, kind of like that other green stuff [basil] but not really. More weird. Kind of bitter, but a little sweet...")

So, tarragon is gone. As is chocolate and vanilla and any other pleasurable flavor, really.

I went through almost a year of no smell a few years ago and actually got pretty depressed. There's no good season for it: you miss spring lilacs, summer grass mowing, fall cider and Christmas trees. Unfortunately I didn't lose weight, as I kept on eating trying in vain to capture some hint of flavor. I found I gravitated toward fried food as there was at least some satisfaction in the "fatty mouth feel" as we used to say in the snack biz.  I think the worst was eating a brownie: absolutely nothing.

This is how I test my sense of smell: I open a bottle of rubbing alcohol and sniff. If I get nothing, no good. The only good news that I've found is that the world actually smells more bad than nice and you skip those odors as well. It was a good time to be at the diaper stage, for one thing. And when my smeller comes back, it's always a surprise how many things smell. Dishwashing liquid, hand cream, the garbage bin, office supplies, Henry's laundry hamper, cat food - I'm bombarded with a cacaphony of scent.

As an anosmiac,  you get no sympathy. If you lose any other sense (hearing, vision, touch) it's taken seriously, but losing your sense of smell is seen as kind of a joke. Or at least trivial. There's a web forum for folks like me (of course) where we console each other and discuss possible treatments and the inconvenience of it all. It has the tone of nobody knows the troubles we've seen: really, it's a disability! It's dangerous! You could miss a gas leak! a fire! or poison yourself with sour milk!

Anyway, I'm hopeful that this time it's a temporary cold-related differently abledness. I'll let you know. Meanwhile, if I faint, don't bother with the smelling salts.