smooth chill and bread soaked in Tabasco sauce because I could feel the spiciness. Mealtimes were nonevents: when my mother cooked dinner, I could hear the sizzle and the clang from the next room over, but the scent of sautéing garlic and roasting meat fell upon a lifeless string of olfactory tunnels and nerves. And when I ate, a bite of steak may as well have been a chunk of cardboard warmed over.
Only a couple of months earlier I had spent long nights in a professional kitchen, awash in the scents of orange peel and clacking chicken bones. I had breathed in the heady aroma of salt- and oil-encrusted sardines, willowy braised leeks, poached eggs on garlic-skewered toast. A simple mushroom had inspired layers of flavor in my mouth. My clothes had reeked of butter. My hands were caked in the odors of thyme and stock. I had run back and forth from the walk-in refrigerator to the kitchen on strong working legs, holding bitter bouquets of arugula and tubs bearing butchered legs of lamb, pink flesh glistening and mottled with blood.
But now I wouldn’t go near the kitchen. I wouldn’t touch the stove. Even as I became increasingly mobile, nimble on crutches or hopping around on one leg, I hardly ever stepped foot into the room. I couldn’t yet admit my terror.
ANOSMIA HAS A NUMBER of causes. Blockages can form like nasal polyps, small growths of inflamed tissue lining the inner nose, eliminating the pathway for aromas to the brain. Seasonal allergies can stop scent molecules in their tracks; an illness can strike, damaging the receptor cells of the nose. Or, like with me, there can be an impact, a head trauma, and suddenly the cocoa-crusted scent of your favorite chocolate shop may as well be the musty stench of a high school locker room.
Anosmia can be sudden, stolen by a knock of the head. It can happen slowly, after years of damage caused by a virus or in the aftereffects of surgery. Congenital asnomics are born without a sense of smell. In the weeks after the accident, when I sat at my father’s computer desk with my bandaged leg propped up to the side and Googled “loss of smell,” I couldn’t imagine that the congenitals feel their loss as acutely. Had they ever experienced the scent of fresh-cut grass on a spring morning?
Richard Doty, head of the Taste and Smell clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, and colleagues conducted a study on the effects of taste and smell disorders, including anosmia, on 750 patients seen over six years. The researchers reported that those without smell had trouble cooking and eating and struggled with mood changes and feelings of safety. Depression, Doty said, was common. I wasn’t surprised.
I wasn’t surprised either to read a study done by Daniel V. Santos and colleagues on 445 patients who were treated at a clinic in Virginia. Santos found that for those with impairment of the nose—whether anosmia or hyposmia—there is a higher risk of experiencing hazardous events day to day. He doesn’t mean broken bones or slips and falls. Santos asked about specific hazards, ones that have to do exclusively with smell. Thirty-seven percent of smell-impaired participants, he found, had experienced a dangerous scent-related event, twice the rate of a fully-functioning control group. Thomas Hummel and Steven Nordin sum it up in the introduction to their 2003 paper, “Quality of Life in Olfactory Dysfunction,” for the Sense of Smell Institute. “When the sense of smell is lost,” they write, “it is not just that it becomes a difficult task to differentiate between cardboard and a hamburger, but also a sense is lost which alerts us to dangers from fire or rotten food.”
I could relate. Already I knew that fear. I examined every piece of food that I put into my mouth. That quart of milk: fresh or sour? That bag of spinach: new or old? I had only the visual to guide me. Without smell, I could not taste more than the salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami of the tongue. I
Only a couple of months earlier I had spent long nights in a professional kitchen, awash in the scents of orange peel and clacking chicken bones. I had breathed in the heady aroma of salt- and oil-encrusted sardines, willowy braised leeks, poached eggs on garlic-skewered toast. A simple mushroom had inspired layers of flavor in my mouth. My clothes had reeked of butter. My hands were caked in the odors of thyme and stock. I had run back and forth from the walk-in refrigerator to the kitchen on strong working legs, holding bitter bouquets of arugula and tubs bearing butchered legs of lamb, pink flesh glistening and mottled with blood.
But now I wouldn’t go near the kitchen. I wouldn’t touch the stove. Even as I became increasingly mobile, nimble on crutches or hopping around on one leg, I hardly ever stepped foot into the room. I couldn’t yet admit my terror.
ANOSMIA HAS A NUMBER of causes. Blockages can form like nasal polyps, small growths of inflamed tissue lining the inner nose, eliminating the pathway for aromas to the brain. Seasonal allergies can stop scent molecules in their tracks; an illness can strike, damaging the receptor cells of the nose. Or, like with me, there can be an impact, a head trauma, and suddenly the cocoa-crusted scent of your favorite chocolate shop may as well be the musty stench of a high school locker room.
Anosmia can be sudden, stolen by a knock of the head. It can happen slowly, after years of damage caused by a virus or in the aftereffects of surgery. Congenital asnomics are born without a sense of smell. In the weeks after the accident, when I sat at my father’s computer desk with my bandaged leg propped up to the side and Googled “loss of smell,” I couldn’t imagine that the congenitals feel their loss as acutely. Had they ever experienced the scent of fresh-cut grass on a spring morning?
Richard Doty, head of the Taste and Smell clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, and colleagues conducted a study on the effects of taste and smell disorders, including anosmia, on 750 patients seen over six years. The researchers reported that those without smell had trouble cooking and eating and struggled with mood changes and feelings of safety. Depression, Doty said, was common. I wasn’t surprised.
I wasn’t surprised either to read a study done by Daniel V. Santos and colleagues on 445 patients who were treated at a clinic in Virginia. Santos found that for those with impairment of the nose—whether anosmia or hyposmia—there is a higher risk of experiencing hazardous events day to day. He doesn’t mean broken bones or slips and falls. Santos asked about specific hazards, ones that have to do exclusively with smell. Thirty-seven percent of smell-impaired participants, he found, had experienced a dangerous scent-related event, twice the rate of a fully-functioning control group. Thomas Hummel and Steven Nordin sum it up in the introduction to their 2003 paper, “Quality of Life in Olfactory Dysfunction,” for the Sense of Smell Institute. “When the sense of smell is lost,” they write, “it is not just that it becomes a difficult task to differentiate between cardboard and a hamburger, but also a sense is lost which alerts us to dangers from fire or rotten food.”
I could relate. Already I knew that fear. I examined every piece of food that I put into my mouth. That quart of milk: fresh or sour? That bag of spinach: new or old? I had only the visual to guide me. Without smell, I could not taste more than the salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami of the tongue. I
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