The Strangest Anniversary

Today is my anniversary. It’s not like any other anniversary I’ve heard of, and I don’t really do parties or presents for it. It’s more like a mile marker. A New Year’s Eve without fireworks. A time to see how things have changed.

And how they haven’t.

Seven years ago today I lost my sense of smell.

Way before COVID was on the radar of anyone except the infectious disease specialists, I was learning first hand what it was like to lose your sense of taste and smell. “But you just said smell earlier,” you tell me. True. And once I figured out that it was smell and not taste, that became clearer, but it didn’t make things easier.

Taste and smell are like Batman and Robin. Except smell is Batman, not taste. Smell guides taste, not the other way around.

Taste is 75% flavor, and flavor, what we commonly associate with taste, is actually brought to you by smell. This is why nothing tastes very strong when you have a cold and your nose is all stuffed up.

The good part of taste comes from smell.

January 13th, 2014. The shortest day in the history of my life. I remember going to class in the morning, then having my regular meeting with my supervisors about the status of my teams and the injured athletes. I remember going into the athletic training room I worked in and getting things ready for that day’s practices. I even remember seeing an athlete. I know the athlete’s name and what the injury was.

And then…nothing.

Turns out, I had sustained a concussion at work. No one knows why or how, as no one saw it, and to this day, I still have about 12 hours of memory loss surrounding the event. The symptoms of a concussion vary from person to person, and how the injury was sustained, which is probably why it took me so long to notice that something was wrong. I had spotty memory, raging headaches, dizziness, and fatigue, so those were what I focused on. Eventually, those started to subside and I was able to go back to work and school, albeit slowly. Then I noticed that things tasted funny. It was like having a cold, only I could breathe just fine. Then I realized that it wasn’t just that things tasted funny, it was that they didn’t taste like anything. And I couldn’t smell anything. At all. To test my theory, I went around and smelled every candle in my house–there were quite a few of them. Turns out I was right.

I couldn’t smell anything.

After a really quick round of doctors and specialists, and lots of tests, the verdict came in. Sort of.

They strongly suspected that I damaged my olfactory nerves when I hit my head, from the angle and force of the hit. They didn’t know how bad or how long the symptoms would last, but they were not particularly encouraged about its return. That did not change with follow up appointments, a specialist in taste and smell almost a year later, and an ENT six years later.

Not a good outlook, and no one was positive why.

Life as I knew it changed for me in so many ways. I had no idea how tied to emotion smell was. It doesn’t seem like a connection that would be made easily. After all, what we see and hear and touch brings us so much emotion, makes us feel so much. No one ever really remembers that smell is important. That smells give us emotions too. That smell is so very powerful.

I didn’t know how to “deal” with this change. There is no “National Organization for the Smelling Impaired”. We don’t get special treatment plans or tools for adapting or privileged parking or have any sort of outward sign of what we live with. And honestly, we don’t need one. We can do everything we could do before. It’s just…different.

Eating was stressful. Appetite is pretty much a thing of craving and satisfaction, which I didn’t really have for a long time, but I made do. Eating became maddening and aggravating, and ultimately, disappointing. Because when we have a choice about it, we want something that will taste good. We want something that we like. Something we crave. When nothing you can eat will give that to you, will fill you, will satisfy you, you don’t want to eat anything at all. It’s like those times when you’re starving but nothing sounds good and you don’t know what you want to eat and you ask just about everybody you can what you should eat just so you don’t have to think about it anymore and eventually you just settle on something because “maybe this will do the trick”. A constant cycle of searching for what will work.

For a very long time, nothing did. But I’ve adapted, I’ve grown, I understand, and now I eat just as I did before. Don’t remember what things used to taste like, but I no longer think in terms of what it “should” taste like.

I have no idea what my house smells like. I have candles and an air freshener, and I have read the labels and know what they SHOULD smell like, but you never really know until you can smell it. When I have visitors, I wonder. And I ask if it smells okay. I wasn’t normally that concerned with it before, but now that I don’t know? It’s a concern. Does my trash smell? Does my bathroom? Do I?

I did not want to live like this. I prayed for a miracle of healing almost constantly. I longed for it. I wanted to smell again, I didn’t want to adjust to a new normal, I didn’t want to lose memories of smells and adjust the eating experience or never appreciate the smell of rain again. I prayed as I had never prayed before.

My sense of smell never came back. But slowly, over time, I did heal. Not those damaged nerve endings, but me. My heart. My spirit. My being.

I was healed.

It’s been so long now that I forget frequently that I can’t smell. I’ve never forgotten the frustration of dealing with something that no one understands. Of trying to pretend everything is okay. Of feeling like the world will never be the same. I hope I never forget that. Because I notice different things now. I understand different things now. I hope I can put that to use. I hope that the Lord can use me in a different way now. I have no idea why I’ve been given this challenge, this opportunity, but I know that there is a bigger purpose than for just my own growth. I would like to believe that all the craziness (like the embarrassing dependency on others for anything fragrance related) is not just for me. But even if it is, that’s okay. Because it would not have happened if it did not need to.

It still surprises me that I didn’t go crazy like I thought I was at the time. That I can laugh and joke about that time. That it’s not even a big deal anymore. For all the pain I endured then, the peace of now is stronger.

Maybe that’s the miracle after all.

Happy seven years to my anosmia. Look what we’ve done with each other so far.

Here’s to whatever the future holds.