About a year and half ago, I began to lose my sense of smell. For close to a year now I have had almost no sense of smell. As someone who comes from a family with sharp olfactories, this should have been a staggering loss for me. It indeed was for the first couple of days. However, after these many months I have become so accustomed to an odorless world that I dread regaining my sense of smell.
Lately, I have begun to smell some specific smells and stenches much to my chagrin. An odorless world has not been as bad as I thought it would be. It feels strangely clean. But in the past few weeks, there appears to be some return to the world of smells, especially the bad ones. I do not particularly like it.
My anosmia has not been that anosmic since there has been some ability left still to smell. I was told that with the loss of the sense of smell, food may taste different. It did not. One of the hazards of my condition is that in a toxic and potentially lethal malodorous environment I may expose myself to some serious danger. Or even a domestic situation such as not properly shutting off cooking gas stove could be seriously endangering. I do check the regulators on my gas stove a couple of times after I am done cooking with a final check just before going to sleep.
As some olfactory returns, I am not sure if I want it back. This is a strange thing to say for someone like me who processed people using smells wafting from them. I used to think and still do that it should be the least common courtesy to fellow humans for one not to smell bad, if not, smell good at all times.
Along with the loss of the sense of smell, I did wonder what if I also became colorblind suddenly. Now that is something I may not be able to deal with equanimity, especially because I like to paint. Come to think of it though, since I already know what colors look like I could still paint as easily as I do now.
