Do you have a heightened sense of smell?
I do, and sometimes it can be a royal pain in the keester!
Now I should say at the outset that, yes foul habit that it is, I am a smoker. Now you would think that smoking would just about kill your sense of taste and smell. In my case, though, it actually hasn’t done much to either! I can still tell whether I have just the right amount of nutmeg in the cabbage or Farm Boy Chimichura Spice (which rocks btw!) in the chicken dredge. And I can still smell a delicate perfume when someone walks by me on the street.
That’s the good part! The not so good part is when my sense of smell gets overloaded. Take for example this evening, sitting comfy in my backyard (it is 26 degrees here tonight – weird for October in Ottawa on Tundra!) and my neighbour decides to toss one of those nasty Bounce sheets into their dryer. It took all of about 5 minutes before I could feel a skull cracking sinus headache coming on. I retreated into the house.
I have had hyperosmia as long as I can remember. It used to drive my Mother nutz, every slice of bread I picked up would get a deep smell (I love the smell of fresh bread!). “It’s not mouldy!” she would say exasperatedly. But you know, I could then and still can tell you if a slice of bread is about to go mouldy!
And smells have a memory for me (yet another facet of my goofy ‘Trivial Pursuit’ mind). I can tell you what perfume Lynn or Shelley or any other girl I dated wore (ok, truth is back in my ‘dating life’ most of the girls wore Opium, Cinnabar or Charlie – but I am dating myself). I can remember the smell of Vitalis (my Dad’s fave) even though I haven’t seen a bottle in many, many moons. Those smells are good memories. I can’t remember what the Souk in Cairo smelled like or any of the numerous funerals I have attended.
For whatever reason having Covid seemed to have ratcheted up the hyperosmia to another level. This morning I got up and, even though I work from home every day, immediately could smell dog dander. Out came the vacuum and mop, down the stairs went the throw rugs in the kitchen and as I sit here typing this nary a whiff of Frieda in the air (she actually smells good most of the time!).
Hyperosmia – great for telling if you have too much spice in the curry or whether the bread is about to go mouldy. But sometimes hyperosmia just stinks.
Sniff Sniff,
Mark
(Sniffer image above courtesy of AsoyID @ Pixabay)