All my troubles did *not* seem so far away.

[mrissa]

Yesterday was not the best day to be a Mrissa.

One of the symptoms I've had that I haven't been talking about much with most people is dysosmia (or possibly dysgustis*). Those of you who have fun with root words know that's approximately "bad smell (or taste)": every once in awhile, about every couple of days, something smells or more often tastes like something completely other than itself. The dog smells like saffron. Soap smells like blueberries. Cornbread tastes like almonds. Pizza tastes like cigarette butts.

It's not consistent. The dog no longer smells like saffron, and I am not going to be turned off by pizza for the rest of my life. But even when it's not unpleasant, it's extremely disturbing. As I've said here before, I get a lot of data about the world from my sense of smell. I navigate by smell enough that I bump into things more when I have a cold, because I couldn't smell where they were. People can lie to you with words, with facial expressions, even with body language if they practice really hard. It is very difficult for people to lie with their body chemistry. Most of the time I'm smelling accurately. Every once in awhile I'm not, and I'm terrified (no, this is not too strong a word) that I'm going to smell that someone I love is mad at me when they are not, or something important like that. It is small comfort that I only seem to be mis-smelling, not making up smells out of the blue, because there is never a time when I'm not smelling something, so...yah. Data suspect. Very scary. Also because I have a keener sense of smell than anyone around me when my mom isn't around, I can't always verify whether I've got something wrong, because much of the time I accurately smell things that the people I'm with can't smell at all, so they can't say, "No, you think you smell a faint whiff of lemons, but really it's coffee." This really, really, really bothers me. A lot.

So yesterday. Yesterday I woke up from the kind of nightmare that is about your normal life, which is not at all a favorite kind, so I was skittery already, and tired. And then they resurfaced the road outside.

I am grateful that they do this. Truly I am. It is a good thing to have resurfaced roads. But the smell, oh, the smell would have been bad enough if it had just stayed that smell. I would have still been smelling it, but I could have started to tune it out. Instead, about every twenty minutes it would mutate for a minute or two and smell like something else disgusting. (I will spare you the list in case anyone reading this is as scent-suggestible as I am.) And then go back to the road resurfacing stench. So I could never get it to stay in the back of my head.

Lunch was not the easiest thing in the world. The whole day, in fact, could have been better.

I have hopes that today will, in fact, be better. But uff da my God, yesterday was not the most fun I've ever had.

*I said to timprov, "Well, you know what they say, dysgustis non est," and then I was giggling too hard to get the rest of it out. When I finally did, he spent the rest of the car ride looking at me like, "I have no one but myself to blame for this woman's punning presence in my life." Which is perfectly true; it's all voluntary.

Comments

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

I know how disturbing it was to me to have my sense of smell shut down due to the chemo. I can only begin to imagine how awful this must be for you, given that wrong information is so much harder to cope with than absence of information. I hope you find out what's going on and how to stop it soon.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I've been thinking of you with yours shut down, too.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

Mine is about 95% back to normal, give or take. I can smell my husband again (and boy, THAT was a disturbing thing to be missing) and my food tastes like food rather than cardboard. And the late summer and coming fall smell like themselves as well, which is good because Pennsic had no smells.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I honestly have no idea what I would do if I couldn't smell the people I love. I would be extremely upset much of the time. I'm glad it's better for you now.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

That sounds very unpleasant. I'm sorry.

I get very little information through smell, but I'm relating this to my hearing. I don't think I have especially acute hearing (particularly now, in middle age!), but I seem to have more sensitive directional hearing than a lot of people do. I'm trying to imagine my starting to intermittently hear sounds from an inaccurate direction--it would be very disconcerting. And if I couldn't tell when it was happening and when it wasn't--ugh. I'm really, really sorry this is happening to you with smell.

[kendwoods.livejournal.com]

Wow. I feel for you. I don't know what I'd do if one of my senses was on the fritz.

I hope your sense of smell starts playing nice soon.

**sends happy nose vibes your way**

[fiddledragon]

ugh, that would be disconcerting and disturbing at best *hugs*...

[redbird]

Oh, dear. I hope that today is better--that sounds as unpleasant as random visual hallucinations would be for me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sometimes the distinction between this and olfactory hallucinations is not as clear to me as it seems to be to my neurologist. He seems to feel, quite firmly, that this is like seeing colors wrong rather than like seeing colors where there isn't anything at all. And I get the distinction, and I agree that it describes my experience better--but sometimes it just doesn't matter, it's still invalid data and, frankly, sucks.

[loup_noir]

Having one of your major senses on the fritz, especially when the impulses are scrambled, sounds awful - although the idea of a vanilla-scented dog does have an odd appeal.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I actually like the smell of a moderately clean dog. Some of the stereotypical "bad smells" actually are bad to me (rotting garbage, for example), but others really aren't (wet dog, human sweat).

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

That sounds very disturbing. My main sense is vision and if I started seeing things in the wrong colors I'd be freaked.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Gaaaaaah. That's horrible.

I think your Bad Fairy Godmother needs to find a new hobby PDQ.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

urgh.

That sounds really, really, really unpleasant.

*moral support*

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Wow. You really aren't having any fun at all. I'm really sorry. All my fingers are crossed they find the cause and fix this very soon.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

How disconcerting! That sounds very unpleasant indeed.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Eeee. Weird and unfun. Crossing fingers for you.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Oh, how weird and unpleasant. This sounds like something out of Oliver Sacks (who would, I bet, be fascinated by your natural sense of smell and spend many pages ruminating about how different people perceive the world through their senses, and for what he has missed in his life by not being you.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I love Oliver Sacks's books. I have been thinking of curling up with one for a comfort read.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I am very sorry. I hope today is better.

[talimena.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, that sounds horrible! I hope that today is (has been) better.

Unasked for advice, ignore as needed

[eileenlufkin.livejournal.com]

I remembered reading a magazine article a long time ago about people suffering from problems with their sense of taste and smell; and it turned out to be zinc deficiency. I googled and found this:

http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/cc/zinc.html#rda

If any of the other symptoms match, or if you're taking iron supplements, it might not hurt to check if your vitamins have zinc in them.
Probably you tried this a long time ago, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.

Re: Unasked for advice, ignore as needed

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This was one of the first things I had the doctor check, since a friend had had this problem, and I am taking iron supplements (more than one, and it's keeping my iron levels just barely in the black). But my zinc levels appeared to be well within the normal ranges. Too bad, too: taking zinc tablets would have been a quick and easy fix.

Re: Unasked for advice, ignore as needed

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the disclaimers, by the way: it makes a good deal of difference in whether I huff, "Yes, I know that," or just say, "Already checked it, thanks" if people recognize that I might have thought of something.

Unless that "something" is pregnancy, in which case their throats must be ripped out immediately.