Friday, January 8, 2010

Lost my senses

My sense of smell has never been very good. I suppose it stems way back to my early childhood when I was diagnosed with allergies. Mom and Dad took me to Iowa City to see Dr. Seabome (not sure of spelling). You may recall my parents (and Grandparents) are U of I grads, so the U of I hospital was in their stomping grounds.

So they dragged me off across the state to get lots of holes poked into me with stuff that made me itch. Then I got to take allergy shots from an early age through age 18. During a few bad episodes I took steroids to reduce symptoms. Nose sprays have also played into my lack of olfactory nerves.

Sometimes I'm glad I'm nasally challenged. When I worked at the landfill my lack of sense of smell served me very well! And I'm sure my family of men have snuck a few of their own silent smells by me when I wasn't looking.

But I miss out too. Oh I can smell some good stuff - bread at Subway for example. And grilling meat while tailgating. I don't catch a lot of smells though.

I enjoy reading descriptions of people smelling things. I know, it's funny - sniffing vicariously through others. I'm listening to a book right now where the author has the main character identifying subtle smells in a room - lotion, perfume, hairspray. I rarely smell those things long past the time that they were first applied.

I listened to the book describing these things while driving by a hog confinement. Oh yes, I could smell that! (my gramps used call it the smell of money).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I can't smell either--I think it is from our parents' chain smoking!