The 29-Day Blogging Challenge: O is for Olfactory Dysfunction
When I was a very wee lad – 4, maybe 5 – I remember the family talking about one of my cousins, and the fact that she had no sense of smell. I recall them describing how difficult that must be, not being able to smell foods or perfumes or flowers or whatnot. As they prattled on (as adults tend to do in the eyes of a wee’un) I got to thinking – what do foods and perfumes and flowers and these mysterious whatnots smell like? I set out on a quest to figure that out, which proved to be an exercise in frustration, because as far as I could tell, they all smelled the same, as did trees and day-old socks and blueberry pie and dog shit and the very air surrounding me. Everything was the same, in that it smelled like ‘nothing’. I contrasted this indecipherable variance with my sister, who could tell if a mouse farted in the next city block. Obviously, I was missing some basic component or ability.
I started telling people that I had no sense of smell – i.e. “Hey, I’m obviously malformed in some way here!” – which they all thought was adorable, because obviously I just wanted to be like my older cousin Jen. How the hell is a lad of single-digit age supposed to convince the elders that he does not, in fact, have a sense of smell and is not actually faking this condition for some fabricated commonality with a slightly distant relative? So I went years saying I had no sense of smell, with the family accommodatingly rolling their eyes and saying “yeah, sure” whenever the topic was brought up. They did grudgingly admit, however, that not once did I ever ‘slip up’ and comment on how good dinner smelled, or a person’s perfume, or take a fleeting whiff of the nearest bouquet. It wasn’t until I was 17 that a doctor finally administered a test – taking all of 30 second, mind you – and confirmed, in writing, on official letterhead, and able to withstand legal scrutiny if need be, that what I had been saying for over 10 years, and what had been dismissed as little more than an elaborate case of make-believe, was true: I have no sense of smell.
The technical term is anosmia, or congenital (meaning ‘since birth’) anosmia, a form of olfactory dysfunction. There are varying degrees of olfactory dysfunction, anosmia being the complete lack of the sense altogether. It can be caused by a number of things – a head injury (being thrown down the basement stairs, perhaps?), or an early childhood infection, or just plain luck of the draw, as in my case. (Although oddly, I have a ‘sense’ of what a few things – like roses and apple pie – smell like, things I would have been around as a young bugger. I can’t quite describe it – it’s like trying to recall the details of a dream, they’re there, and you can almost touch them, but they fade the closer you get…) The olfactory sense was the latest to develop evolutionarily – it is the only one with its own direct pathway to the brain, bypassing the cerebral cortex completely. Biologists theorize the sense developed to allow animals to ‘sense’ predators, or rotten food, or other hidden dangers in their environment. Those don’t really play a factor in modern life, so it really hasn’t been an issue for me. It would be far different had I lost my sense of smell when I was in my teens, after having spent years interacting with my environment through that plus my other four senses; but having never really smelled anything, the fact that I can’t do so to this day is no major deal.
That’s not to say that I don’t realize that I miss out on a lot of stimuli and experience. I’ve mentioned before that I love food, but I recognize that my perception of flavour is far different from the Normals out there. The tongue can only detect 4 tastes – sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. There is a lot of debate about adding piquance (i.e. the ‘bite’ of chili peppers) and savoriness (i.e. difficult to describe, but often regarded as ‘brothy’ or ‘meaty’) to that list. Anyway, those are tastes; the concept of flavour comes in by pairing those tastes with the aroma, or smell, of food. Together, they represent the full sensory experience of food; so technically, my sense of taste is intact, but I have no added input from the olfactory system, so my sense of flavour is my sense of taste. As a result, other attributes become more important to me – e.g. texture. And to boost the inputs from food, I tend to cook with – or add – a lot of spice. It’s a good thing Jill – even with a fully-functioning olfactory system – likes spicy fare as well.
Having no sense of smell can be limiting, of course. Despite my early yearnings, I could never become a cop – I’d approach a car with ten pounds of marijuana and a dead hooker in the trunk and wouldn’t be the wiser. I could never be a chef – at least not an overly successful one. I can’t be a sommelier, a food critic, a fragrance tester, and I certainly can’t be a sniffer dog employed by airport customs – not that I’d necessarily want to, but you get the point. And there are a few dangers as well – I can’t detect a fire or gas leak in the house, so I’ve always had smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. I can’t detect spoiled food, so am overly cautious when it comes to expiration dates and thoroughly cooked meats (after a few bouts of self-induced food poisoning, one learns to be extra vigilant). But outside of these, I’ve never really thought much about it. I watch with curious amusement when people smell their food and comment on its aroma – I have no concept of that experience, and as much as I would like to know what that entails, if I was going to be malformed so as to be lacking a particular sense, smell is definitely the lesser of, well, five evils.
Interestingly, the sense of smell has been associated with memory, specifically the ability to recall events and places. I’ve heard many people describe being ‘taken back’ to a particular time, just by a random aroma. Obviously I’ve never experienced this per se, but do understand the phenomenon. I tend to get the same reaction by taste and sound – there’s a certain sour orange flavour that instantly transports me to a parking lot in Florida when I was maybe 4 years old. A certain texture of mashed potatoes reminds me of my fraternal grandmother’s kitchen, me propped up on a stool playing with her egg timer. And music has a profound effect on my situational memory – I remember walking out of a university party with my best friend whenever I hear Alive by Pearl Jam; or driving through the Muskokas in the middle of the night when I hear Five Days in May by Blue Rodeo. The list is endless, and that’s one of the reasons I’m so into music – it’s more than an aural experience, it’s a contextual one, the ability to not just remember but to feel, to be there, to relive past events. Some are topically paired with the song itself; others just happened to be playing at the right time. But almost every song I hear, I actually relive where, when, and with whom I first, or most poignantly, heard it. Maybe it’s better that I don’t have a sense of smell, otherwise I’d be a mental time-travelling frequent-flyer with no productive value in society, just a battered old iPod, a scratch-and-sniff book, and a glazed look of ‘remember when’ spread across my face.
And not to be crude, but only completely honest: If I only had one day with a fully functioning sense of smell, the one aroma, fragrance, waft of olfactory bounty that I would love to experience – along with all the wondrous smells that must be available in this world – is that of a particularly vile fart. I just don’t understand what the big deal is – what is it about a 3-octave, 10-second trouser-trumpet trill that makes a certain someone run from the room, teary-eyed and choking, cursing the hell-beast that now floats threateningly at nose level? “It can’t be that bad,” I say. “To me, it smells just like blueberries!”
Previous posts: Introducing the 29-Day Blogging Challenge; A is for Anonymity; B is for Busses; C is for Canada; D is for Dogs;E is for Expatriate; F is for Failure;G is for Google; H is for Hedgehog; I is for Indian food; J is for Jill, obviously; K is for Kurt Cobain; L is for Listerine; M is for Mac&Cheez; N is for Night
I think many vertebrates, including most mammals and reptiles, have two distinct olfactory systems—the main olfactory system, and the accessory olfactory system
Report abuse »