Would you like stuffing with that?

Sorry possibly a bit of a double innuendo there I think. However, imagine the scenario. Its Christmas day, people walk into the kitchen, have a bit of a nosy about, then they say "mmm that smells great", then they may well say, "is that stuffing you're cooking, oh I love stuffing especially with sausage meat in" (oops maybe I should have edited that bit). Anyway I walk in "that looks nice" and that's it, that looks nice. Nothing more to say really. Except for, "I need a drink now"!! Sorry mum, lemonade of course!
However, no more moaning or negativity, let me continue.

Some of the Anosmics/Parosmics I've been talking to on social media, yes there are a few of us out there somewhere! Have been discussing Christmas and how it affects us all in different ways. Some of them have children so take pleasure in watching their excitement when opening their presents, or sadly thinking, I will never be able to smell my daughter's first bottle of perfume I buy her in Christmases' to come, or, I am going to hide away and pretend Christmas doesn't exist. Which I must admit I thought might be me at first. Slapped wrist, don't say that Debbie!
Obviously it all comes down to the same thing retrospectively, can't smell or taste the lovely things associated with Christmas, or can, but they smell and taste weird/disgusting, take your pick.
We have to focus on different things these days like being with loved ones, the cosiness and pleasure, the atmosphere, the Christmas lights and decorations, even watching daft films on TV! I know I said something similar in my last blog, but that's what as Anosmics or Parosmics, we have to make priority now.

Oh yes and not forgetting the snow of course, which we had an absolute deluge of a few weeks ago and where is it now when we need it? Well disappeared of course never to be seen again, over Christmas anyway, typical!

                                                  View from our back garden, good eh!

So......the cards are written, nearly, the presents bought and wrapped, another nearly, and I have a works Christmas do coming up, involving a sit down dinner....oh oh! I'll let you know about that one once it's happened.......

The Christmas do has now happened, jumped ahead a bit there haven't I?  Anyway it was actually quite fun, I'd love to say the food was gorgeous, it looked good, but didn't taste so good. It didn't help that the guy opposite me said he'd been in this restaurant last week and had what I was now trying to eat, and thought it was lovely, oh well he wasn't to know.

Well I know I said I'd write another post before Christmas, but it might be getting a bit late in the day now.  So just in case I don't check in until afterwards, and it wont be long after Christmas I can assure you as I'll have lots to tell (oh, oh you thinks)!! Thank you so much for reading this blog and your support. Stay tuned in, and till next time.

Have a very Happy Christmas and great new year, who knows what it may bring!

Christmas is coming but I'm not getting fat!

Well folks its on its way....a bit weird coz last year I could smell and taste my Christmas dinner.  My family do a mean Christmas dinner, so I'll feel like I'm missing out a bit......well a lot!

I can't actually believe it's been ten months since I've had Anosmia.
 

I'm sitting here looking at our lovely Christmas tree. We always buy a real one but I can't smell it this year. I do remember the wonderful pine smell so that's something I suppose.

My lovely family are rallying around for me this Christmas, on Christmas Day my brother in law is going to have a go at making gravy from scratch so that there's no risk of onion powder in it from the stock cubes......onions = yuck! And on Boxing Day my mum and dad are doing a hot buffet so I can eat what I know I can manage. Lucky bugger really aren't I.

I still want chocolate because psychologically it'll help. I am not going to act like a victim at this time of year and spoil it for everyone else as they've all been so supportive and brilliant.

I can still get excited about presents I can still enjoy all of the Christmas lights, and most importantly of all, I can still enjoy being around family and good friends.

 

Eddie - too much vino I think!

Including festive season cats like Eddie, my sisters cat, one of three in fact.

And of course not forgetting Doodie our cat, who'll get spoiled rotten as usual! No pics of him though he's too much of a scaredy cat, bad joke again. Anyway he's ginger and white and very cute.  I will get a picture of him on this blog one day if he'll stay still for long enough!

Well fat certainly won't be on the menu this year ha, ha that's another bad joke of mine....oh dear. As you all know I have a problem with that these days, remember 'skinny little me' post?
And scented candles will be interesting but they'll still look nice. Smell of food cooking, nope not going to happen, unless my Parosmia kicks in at which point I'll be sticking my nose in a glass of Amaretto, which I can still manage. Hick whoops!! Oh and by the way I had Christmas lunch with my colleges today, a bit anxious on that one? You bet!  However I told myself not to worry about the food aspect of things and focus instead on the lovely atmosphere and good company. So guess what it worked!

Listen to me being all positive, not bad eh? Possibly a bit of bravado in there I'll let you know on that one, but I'm doing ok I think. You'll get a few more posts out of me before the big event so we'll find out together ok.

Get plugged in!

Hello again I thought I'd try being a bright spark, get it, bright spark, plugged in.....ok maybe not!! Remember me saying in my last post that I would do some research into nose plugs?
Well somebody I know on an Anosmic Community website I'm a member of,  said, why don't you make one yourself......em I mentioned this to my husband, oh what the hell, why am I keeping this quiet, his name is Ruck. Cool eh!
Anyway I digress. He looked at me in astonishment and said 'what, are you joking?' So I kind of thought well I suppose it is a bit too much to ask, but you never know.
So.....I decided I'd carry on with my research.

Ok so nose plugs......we have nose plugs for swimmers, nose plugs for athletes, nose plugs for snorers, (Ruck could do with some of those!), and nose plugs for nosebleeds. Guess what no nose plugs for Parosmics, unbelievable, in fact when I put it in the search engine, it came up with nose plugs for insomniacs!

Anyway, as you can see that was no help at all, look at the skinny bugger above, (or starting to get that way anyway). In fact I'm even more skinny now ugh, I probably should have put this photograph in the 'Skinny little me' post but I couldn't work out how to upload photographs at the time!
Oops I'm digressing again! So no joy there. Nagged at Ruck a second time, and once he saw where my research had led me, he actually said he'd look into making a nose plug after all.  He's good with his hands, you know!!
Hmm so how?  What about clipping it on the side of your nose, so it looks like a nose ring then the plug part of it which is in your nostril, cant be seen.  It just makes you look like a rock chick or rock god depending on who wears it, and how rock an roll would an older person look with a fake nose ring?  What I'd be a good advert for the older person, thanks!
Do you guys have any ideas? Let me know if you do, but, be warned I might pinch them. See you next post.

P.S. If you find that you get this blog posted on your Social Media or privately 100 million times (ok a slight exaggeration), its not that I'm holding a gun to your head saying read this or else! It's just because I'm still working out how to post this to everyone once only instead of pressing any old buttons.  I'll get there just bear with me.

Nobody nose.

I've just realised something that I haven't told you guys about.  It's crazy because it's a really big part of my life now!

Finger against the nose thing......you're probably thinking what? I think the reason I forgot to tell you is that it's become a routine I go through every day.  A bit like washing I suppose, actually nothing like washing, (which I do a lot of these days just in case.....see blog number five for that one)! Let me tell you what I mean.
When this all started my sister bought me an amazing book called 'Season To Taste'. About a women who got Anosmia due to head trauma in a car accident she was involved in.  At the time I didn't want to read it, but in the end I forced myself to, and even though it was very close to home and made me cry a bit it was also a real eye opener as I was going through so many identical things.
In one episode of the book she was talking to an expert in smell deprivation who after doing some tests, said that she may be suffering from Anosmia and Parosmia at the same time, and you couldn't tell unless you smelt from one nostril then the other to see if there was any difference.

Anyway it was quite a revelation when I tried this out as it is exactly what I have, When I pressed down my left nostril I could smell nothing from my right, and so taste nothing either, but when I did it the other way round, pressing down my right nostril, all that I could smell and taste from my left was disgusting  I'm still doing that now it seems to help a bit, what a complex life I lead!  I'm considering trying to plug my left nostril up, (the Parosmic one). Maybe I'll try a nose plug as long as I don't breath it in and choke. Or maybe my husband could invent a nose plug for Parosmics, he could patent it and make a fortune.
Sorry I'm not making light of this at all, but it would be a good thing to have for Parosmics.  I'm sure there must be something out there. I'll let you know.

Share and Share alike!

I'd like to tell you about my husband.......he is so generous that sometimes he lets me share his nose.  I know it sounds crazy, but think about it ....there's a towel that I haven't washed for a bit, or my lovely slob out jumper that I wear all the time.  Well I don't know if they need washing, I cant smell them. So this is where my husbands nose comes in handy! I am constantly asking him 'does this need a wash, do I need a wash?' (Only joking I still know my hygiene)!  What is that horrible, remember my Parosmia, smell in the air? Because I know there's something there, and I want to know its true smell! It's frustrating not to naturally be able to do these things on my own, as when he's out, I have no way of knowing. I feel very vulnerable sometimes, if I forgot to switch the gas hob off, I wouldn't be able to smell it on my own, or if there was a fire I wouldn't be able to smell the smoke.

He has also become a natural at taste testing, as I still attempt to cook oh dear!  The thing is I don't forget how to cook I just have to make sure I don't over do it, with the chilli for example, or how much salt, cumin, herbs, garlic I put in. I'm sure you get the picture! I have since however made a rather enlightening  discovery. The Allium family ( no not Adams family), of vegetables, are awful for me to eat as my parosmia kicks in big style. Onion, garlic, spring onions, chives, the lot, l now can't stand! The problem is also that so many things have onion powder in that I now have to cook from scratch carefully!! Otherwise I'd never eat anything savoury again. But at least now I know one of the triggers, so its avoidable.

My amazing, supportive husband is the only one who can be there to help me with all these situations, as he has to live with it day to day.  Hats off to ya honey xx

Skinny little me

Before all of this happened I was fit, had a good healthy body weight and looked pretty good if I do say so myself. Then wham! Food smelled and tasted disgusting, I felt sick even when I looked at it because I knew it would be unbearable. So I simply stopped eating!

Then the weight started to come off, slowly at first because there was plenty of muscle for my body to eat away on.  Then my clothes started to get loose, I got bony, had no energy then ended up in A&E with such low blood sugar that I collapsed. My doctor slowly realised it was getting serious when I lost one and a half stone in the space of a few months. My body was starting to shut down, I was literally starving myself to death.  Oops a bit melodramatic here I think, but it was very scary not just for me but lovely husband and family.

I was put on Complan a nutritional dietary supplement, to help me gain weight. But there was this little thing buzzing around in my head by now, telling me if I start drinking this stuff all the time I'll get too fat. Not a good way to think when you're already too skinny. And do you know what woke me up and made me smell the roses not!!  My horrible stretchy skin from muscle loss and when my husband said my boobs had gone, and considering they used to be quite ample that was a bit of a shock, and the fact that my lack of muscle there made them look like cows udders!! Aaaannd that I now looked my age or older when anybody I know always thought I was a good few years younger than I actually was.
How ridiculous that it took my vanity rather than my health to realise how ill I actually was.  I took a good look in the mirror and staring back at me was this scrawny fu....  k up women who was not only ruining her own life but also the lives of her loved ones.
So you'll probably stop reading at this point and think how stupid and selfish I was, and actually I would agree with you I'm ashamed to say.  Psychologically my head was turning to mush and I became very depressed, and physically I was a mess.
Break time now folks.....the next post will be a bit more positive I hope!

Parosmia stinks!

Remember when I said I'd get to this later, well now is the later.....
Quote from Wikipedia 'Parosmia -  an olfactory dysfunction that is characterised by the inability of the brain to properly identify an odours "natural smell".
Bit of blurb really, but in laymans terms, instead of  the pleasant smell of your favourite food simmering away for example, that smell is distorted and instead you get an unpleasant smell like, a burned, rotting, fecal (sorry), or chemical smell like sulphur. And because, as I mentioned earlier, smell is directly linked to taste receptors.....yes you've guessed it it's what it tastes like as well.
And so just to be awkward, I have Anosmia in one nostril and Parosmia in the other, so guess what that's like when you're trying to eat?  Or maybe you'd prefer not too!

So let's backtrack a bit shall we.  Once upon a time this girl passed out and hit the back of her head very hard against a wall. This shook her brain so much, (yes I do have a brain I mean she does have a brain, whoops!), that it severed the olfactory nerve fibres attached to her olfactory bulb.
Quote- 'Olfactory bulb' - a structure in the brain that processes information about odours. This meant with the nerve fibres not attached to it anymore, her sense of smell went.
Yes you clever people I was talking about me!  You'd never have guessed!

Anyway at the time when it happened my doctor,  (now ex doctor),  said not to worry, its temporary you'll get it all back in a few weeks when the swelling goes down. Soooo nine months later still no smell, still no taste, except for the Parosmia bit which you are now all experts on!

Ok at this point, no more funnies.
I wanted to curl up into a little ball and never peep out again.  I wanted it to all go away so that I could be normal, I wanted to give up.  I felt like my life was over.  And these feelings are still there, that's why I'm writing this bloody thing anyway.  Writing it all down makes me re live it all I know, but in a way that makes me want to fight it, not just give in and accept it.  I don't want to accept it! 
I've read articles about this when anosmics say, "you just have to learn to live with it, you'll adapt"  or, " you'll get used to it after a while". Are they joking?
Get used to looking at lovely colourful, perfumed flowers and not even bothering to go and smell them because I won't be able to, or they'll smell like crap.  Get used to rubbing my freshly grown herbs through my fingers then realising, as I put them up to my excuse for a nose that they won't smell. But instinct tells me to do that as its what I used to do when I had my wonderful sense of smell. Get used to the fact that my husbands aftershave which I bought him for Christmas and used to smell lovely, now smells of nothing, he smells of nothing. Get used to seeing the look on face when yet again I burst into tears.
I think I'll have to stop writing this for a bit I'm afraid or I'll start crying now. But this is not the end of it oh no!!!

Food glorious food!

Hello, if you've not read the first post, it might be better that you do that first or this post may not make senses!

And so with smell, comes taste.  As smell is directly linked to the taste receptors, (we won't go into the science), in many cases, such as mine, if there's no smell then there's no taste, full stop! I've always loved food, as any member of my family would agree! So it's not so great when anything I eat is tasteless. And then there's my Parosmia, which I'll get to later if you're still reading this by then!

The fact that there is no cure, that all I'm told by doctors, consultants, professionals, is that it might come back in time or never, as the case may be, seems a bit hit and miss to me. Almost as if all of these people have run out of ideas or didn't have any in the first place. "It's not that common" I'm told, "there's no money to do research, it isn't life threatening", and "there are more pressing/urgent illnesses that people are going through, so this can't take priority", I understand all of this, I really do, but to me it's a big deal. Ok not life threatening, but life changing, heartbreaking, frightening, all of the 'ings' I can think of actually!!! Sometimes if I don't make a bit of a joke out of it I'd probably start crying and never stop.
Oh dear here comes the feeling sorry for myself bit again, but if we can put a man on the moon, fly to Mars in an aeroplane, (good old Richard Branson), grow stem cells to make new body parts , which of course is a wonderful thing, or start inventing human robots, that look human and can think for themselves, (scary), then why the hell cant someone invent a cure for this? I bet any Anosmic would prefer it than having a robot do the housework, or better yet cooking tea for them!

Ok rant over, if you're still with me at this point keep your eye out, or follow me for post number three. And any comments or feedback would be very interesting to hear, as long as it's not too mean!!
See you in a bit.

Things I took for granted.

Quote from Wikipedia: Anosmia 'The inability to perceive odour '

Quote from me: 'I can't smell bugger all'

I went for a walk around the estate this afternoon to post a letter that said 'you should be on the electoral register but if you don't that's ok we'll just charge you £100 for being a naughty girl'! That cleared my head!

However, while I was walking I realised that sometimes I forget there is such a thing as smell, that the world doesn't actually smell at all, and everybody's nose is just a vessel to breath through.

I think the world doesn't smell of anything because there is nothing to smell.

Food doesn't smell of anything, cut grass doesn't smell of anything flowers don't smell of anything, and perfume, what's the point in that if you can't smell it? 

It's only when I look at these things that I realise they do smell, especially the things I've just described, as they are, or were nice smells. It's just that I can't smell them. Thing is I can't smell horrible things either like sour milk or dare I say it sweat, or bad breath, but even that would be OK because it would be a smell!
I know that this sounds like I'm feeling sorry for myself, I suppose I am, but that's how I feel at the moment. I need to let it out, to explain it even of its just to myself and maybe people who would be interested in reading this?