The Sense of Smell

When the sense of smell is lost you can almost get depressed. Anosmia is the clinical term, something I knew nothing about. Sadly, now I do. Four months after my husband and I tested positive for COVID-19 I still can’t smell a thing.

Sometimes for a split second, I think I can smell my perfume or my husband’s aftershave. When I get our beds ready for the night and spray my favorite room spray, which is supposed to help us to relax and sleep well, I seem to catch a short sensation of Eucalyptus and Spearmint but it instantly fades away. My brain playing tricks on me?

For a while I had phantom smells, a sensation I wish I would have not experienced. First, everything smelled burned, then it switched and I smelled the ocean. Not the great sea-smell from the beach, but the one you get at a harbor. A bit fishy, a bit salty, a smell that makes you crinkle your nose and you wish to get away from it. It lingered for weeks.

“You are lucky you can’t smell this,” my husband told me when our oldest dog was passing gas and he is not the only one. It seems to be a standard reply when you tell your friends that you can’t smell.

Nobody ever tells the blind to be grateful that he can’t see something that is really bad. It would be uncalled for and unbelievably cruel and heartless. Telling the deaf that he is lucky that he can’t hear? Very unlikely!

Yesterday in the morning I sprayed our bathtub generously with a mildew remover, like I do every Friday. Normally I would open the window right away as suggested because the fumes can really get to you. Yesterday I didn’t. I sprayed and sprayed some more, and then I got dizzy.

My nose didn’t warn me!

“Is the milk still good,” my better half wanted to know because in our house I seem to be the only one who is able to smell rotten food or milk. I gave him a generous portion of THE LOOK.

My Grandma told me ladies and young girls don’t smell bad, which was misinformation I gladly corrected when I had developed some gas one night. “How can a little girl smell that bad,” she wondered and I giggled and laughed. Now there is nothing. I use our fragrance spray every time I leave the bathroom -just in case. I only wear my clothes for a day, even pants and jeans because I can’t tell if I smell. I haven’t so far, but who knows maybe that changed too. Rather be safe than sorry.

I eat mints because I am concerned about my breath. Was there too much garlic in last night’s dinner?

The smell of coffee in the mornings. The smell of snow in the air, because just like Smilla*, I am a snow-girl and I insisted all my life that I can smell snow too.

Did my Valentine’s flowers have a scent?

I have been a SMELL PERSON all my life. Putting my nose into flowers, smelling food, using wax melts, and room sprays throughout the house. I smelled my wine before I enjoyed a sip. I hold my nose up in the air like a dog when I catch an interesting smell. I never realized how much certain smells triggered my memory. The smell of certain foods and dishes gives us so much more than just the anticipation of food. We connect through smells with our past. The memories of Grandma in the kitchen come back when we smell apple pie or HER cookies.

I can’t leave the stove in the kitchen when I cook because I would not know if I am going to burn something.

Does our 16 1/2 year-old dog have to go outside? Did I step in dog poop? The other day I did. Normally I would have smelled it. This time I didn’t and made a mess in the laundry room.

The air after rain, the bedsheets when they are fresh on the bed, smelling like a moonlight breeze.

My husband has a distinctive smell and I miss it so much. We all have a smell that gives us away. Now, since it’s missing I notice the void.

Because I don’t smell anything, I don’t taste much either. That’s just as bad. I can only differentiate between salty, sweet, bitter, and “umami”. Umami is a term that describes a meaty taste, such as that produced by the flavor enhancer glutamine. Because that’s not enough to tell whether I like something or not, I concentrate on the consistency of the food right now. Its color, crispness, and temperature. If all of this is pale, I don’t like it. It already tastes boring, I don’t want it to look boring too.

In order not to get sad, I concentrate on the things that I can still perceive. What I can see, hear and feel under my feet, what feelings colors trigger in me. Because emotions are also aroused by scents. I miss the comfort of the smell of my tea, the smell of onions seared in extra virgin olive oil. When I cook, I feel like I’m standing behind a pane of glass that separates me from enjoyment. And I also miss the smell of me. My perfume collection, my reward for giving up smoking is waiting for me upstairs. I still use it, but the joy is gone.

Sometimes I have an olfactory hallucination (phantosmia). I smell something, for example, coffee, even though there is none because I want it so much. Failure to smell is then like phantom pain. If I let my feelings run free in moments like this, I would get depressed. I then take countermeasures, keep myself busy, creating something new that brings me happiness.

My sense of smell and taste. I took it for granted. I hope it comes back soon.

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*Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (published in America as Smilla’s Sense of Snow) (Danish: Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne) is a 1992 novel by Danish author Peter Høeg tracing the investigation into the suspicious death of a Greenlandic boy in Denmark. A global bestseller, even the film isn’t bad.