Answers

I'm going to be pretty real here, but I hope you will bear with me, because I have learned a lot in the last few days, and I want to share the whole thing.

So I had been making some good progress. Finding ways to enjoy food again, coping well, forgetting this was even a problem anymore. It WASN'T a problem anymore. I was doing great!

Then, all of a sudden, everything stopped. The advances in taste I had made came to a halt. Everything started tasting like it was the same thing again. The “smell” started to be something awful and rank again, and everything tasted like it. Chocolate started being unsatisfying and almost disgusting. Even my blessed hot chocolate was making my stomach curl a bit.

I started eating anything and everything I could, desperate to taste something, anything. Salty food was gross. Sweet food just tasted like a muted version of the “smell”. Spicy food tasted more like salty food than anything else. Meaty food was okay, not great. All I had was knowing when something was hot, because that, too, had a distinct smell/taste of sorts. But that wasn’t enough. I wasn’t satisfied anymore.

Things I ate would give me headaches, and the taste would linger so that everything tasted that way. It was horrible and miserable, I couldn’t do anything about it.

I went to a doctor here to establish as a new patient [mostly for future reference if I needed one], and told her the entire story. She decided that, since I had two head injuries, one of which was definitely from fainting and the other [aka THIS ONE] could have been, she wanted to do a cardiac work-up. So we got an EKG that day, and I scheduled appointments for an echocardiogram and a carotid Doppler. And also another head CT, as it had been over 6 months since the last one.

She said that if everything came back okay, we could close this case.

But this case would never be closed for me. So long as I couldn’t smell, it would always be open.

Testing was simple enough, and I had results within a few hours. Or, rather, I had responses from my doctor within hours. Simple one line responses. Identical except for the test. “Your [test] results were normal.”

Normal? What did normal mean? Were they without injury or problems? Were they unchanged from the last ones? What in the world was normal? I wasn’t normal, I was still having problems!

But there wasn’t anything I could do. It was my body and no one could see anything wrong with it.

So…this was normal. Now.

This was the new normal. I’d claimed it for a while for others, but now it was real. Now it was for me.

Normal.

It wasn’t until early October that a new realization hit me: I was bitter. I was upset that some of my favorite things [food and good smelling things] were now basically not there. 

I was bitter that I had a problem that no one knew how to deal with. No one really knew what to say or what to do. There was no one with experience to help or understand or console. There wasn't even a website for how to live with anosmia. I was in uncharted territory, swimming by myself, and I was exhausted.

10 months of living without smell and I still had no idea how to do this.

Did it affect my every day life? Yes.

Did I think about it all the time? No.

It had become normal. And I was bitter about that.
And I was ashamed of myself.

I knew one thing and one thing only: God did this on purpose. To me. On purpose. And God does not do things just for kicks. There was a reason, very specific and very important, as to why I, who had enjoyed and passionately loved all things smelling for 28 years, should suddenly have that taken away.

And my being bitter was ruining that. It was keeping me from seeing the big picture, and letting God work in me. Through me. With me.

My one consolation was that I never actually shook my fists at the heavens. Have I trusted Him the way I ought to? No. But I don’t think I understood what real trust was. I think I expected this to be a short test and then I would get a pat on the back saying “Good job, kiddo. That was tough. Have it back now.” I had an inkling, however hard I tried to ignore it, that that wasn’t what was going to happen.

And I was right.

My doctor referred me to an ENT specialist who worked in one of the few Taste and Smell clinics in the country. I saw him fairly quickly, brought all of the information from my previous doctors, and was ready for answers.

The first thing I did was a scratch and sniff test developed by the University of Philadelphia, the premiere Smell and Taste Center in the nation. I was relieved to see this stupid little test. Every bit of research I had done started with this test. FINALLY it was my turn.
And then I took it. And it was awful. I had to mark an answer for each question, and everything smelled the same. There were some that I thought I smelled a little different, so they had to be strong scents. I marked whatever the strongest scent was.

I half expected them to come in after and say, “Uh, you got them all right. Nothing is wrong with you. Go home.”

But I knew that was highly unlikely.

Sure enough, the doctor came in and said, “How did that test go?”

“Honestly, I guessed a lot.”

“Yeah…. The scores showed that.”

I smiled a little and laughed. He didn’t.

He asked me to tell him what happened, so I went through the entire story yet again. He asked me just a couple of questions every now and then, the location of my brain injury, what my “smell” smelled like, and how taste was. I answered his questions, and he said, “Let’s take a look.”

He checked my ears, my mouth and throat, my nostrils…then he said, “I want to get a better look in your nose. So I’m going to spray a nasal decongestant and numbing solution up there, let it sit, and then I’ll be back to take a look.”

So he sprayed me, left, and I sat there, waiting. I’m not sure what the mixture was, but it had a distinctly minty aftertaste, as evidenced by the minty flavor dripping down the back of my throat.

And then I saw what was going to be going in my nostrils.

It was massive.

Good thing I was numb, right?

I wanted answers, right?

The doctor came back in and tilted my chair back, then started with the probe thing with a light on the end. Left nostril first, bit of pressure, then he said, “Huh. That’s a little crooked.”

Crooked? Say wha?

He moved onto the right, and that one really hurt. I would swear he was scrambling brain tissue while he was up there. Then he pulled it out, put it away, and said he wished he could see my MRI.

“I brought it with me!” I said excitedly, hopping down from the chair and grabbing it, even while my nostrils felt suspiciously unclogged and clear.

He took it out into the hallway to the nurse, and said he’d be right back.

I heard the bad news from the hallway before he had to tell me.

“I can’t get this to pull up. It says I need to install a program or something. I can’t open it.”

Are you KIDDING? I was supposed to get answers today! The specialist wanted to see my MRI, I brought my MRI! This was supposed to work!

He came back in and said he couldn’t pull it up. Then he said, “Well, you hit your head pretty good.”

Uh, you think?

“Generally, the rule for head injuries is if it doesn’t come back in 6 months, it won’t. That’s not always the case. There have been cases recorded of it coming back a year or more later. That being said… Will you get it back? Probably not.”

I expected that. I did. But it still was a crushing blow to my chest.

“Okay,” I managed to say. “Did you…want me to bring in another copy of the MRI to see? I have another.”

He gave me what I can only call a pitying look. “I don’t think it will make that much of a difference.”

And that was it. As I left the nurse asked if he wanted to see me again, and he didn’t look up from his computer. “Only if something changes.”

I was in a bit of a fog as I walked to the elevator. This nice couple got in with me and she was using hand sanitizer, and offered me some. I took it and she apologized that it was peony scented, but it was better than nothing, right?

She was expecting an answer. So I gave her one. I smiled and said, “Well, I’ve lost my sense of smell, so that’s just fine.”

She smiled back and her husband said, “I wish I couldn’t smell it.”

And it was really funny.

That was good, right?

I went to see a movie right after, something uplifting and fun, so I wouldn’t have to think about it. It helped, and then I went home and cried that night.

The next day I got up and went about my day. Same as I had been doing.

What was the point of moping? I was used to this now. And it wasn’t going to change.

Did it hurt? Yeah. And I still didn’t have answers about what exactly happened to me. At this point, I probably never would.

Could I live with that?

Could I keep doing this day after day?

Well……yeah.

That’s what I’d been doing.

I had done all that I could to find the truth, to find answers, to see if there was any way this could be fixed or put a timeline on it, anything. I had completed all the tests. Seen all the doctors I needed to, some of them quite miraculously. Now it was time to let go.

Letting go takes a long time. Trust takes a long time. Lucky for me, it looks like I have a long time. And if God will be patient with me, I’ll get the hang of this.

I won’t mind the shifting of flavors I’ve gotten used to. I’ll find foods that satisfy me. I’ll stop being surprised by my anosmia. It won't matter anymore. I’ll see this as a gift, as one of my friends suggested the other day. I’ll find a way to turn this weakness into a strength.

This was given to me for a reason. This is essential for my growth and development as a person, as a child of God. I need to have this problem that very few people understand, that there aren't answers for, that leaves me confused and frustrated and sometimes starving. I need this very specific and detailed experience just as it is playing out. I need this in my life. I might not know why for a very long time.

Just like I don’t have answers for my anosmia, I don’t have answers for life, for the “why” or the “how long” or the “what am I supposed to learn from this”. All I have is the reassurance that He knows those things. And that I need to trust Him.

Am I okay with that?

Can I live with that?

Well….yes.

So that’s that, isn’t it?

“No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. … All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable. … It is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire." -- Orson F. Whitney