Scents-less Cruelty
There is a word for this — it’s asnosmic — but no one knows it, and I feel silly using it. It’s easier just to conjure up that old Seinfeld episode, The Smelly Car, in which Elaine proclaims sarcastically, “Can I smell it? What am I, hard of smelling?”
For years I was unable to smell anything, and I do mean anything. I had chronic sinusitis, and even after a sinus surgery, I had a bum nose — I could breathe, but my olfactory nerve wasn’t playing ball anymore. This means I also couldn’t taste much, either; I could tell if something was sweet or salty, and texture still made an impression, but for me there was no difference between, say, caramel and chocolate.
To put it mildly, I didn’t like this. But I got used to it. I didn’t have a lot of choice, it seemed.
Around the time I was pregnant with Stella, though, my sense of smell came surging back, and has been here to stay ever since. It was like being in a black and white movie and having the world suddenly go technicolor. All scents were amazing to me! Newly sharpened pencil — mmmm. Baby scalp — joyous rapture! As month after month passed by with my renewed sense of smell, I began daring to hope that my nose troubles were behind me.
But this has been a killer summer for allergies, for me at least. And about six weeks ago, I got a really bad cold on top of it all. A couple weeks ago I realized I couldn’t smell the things I didn’t even want to smell, like the litter box, or the compost bin, or my own unshowered self. The world had gone back to black and white.
Help.
