I remember smell

It's been such a long time since I posted about phantosmia, and the reason is I haven't had it for a long time now, except very occasionally, and always after some indulgence that I regretted, like eating a ton of chocolate, or drinking red wine. I overcame phantosmia with the help of an acupuncturist I visited in Mill Valley, California. I went to her when the smells that haunted me had became so intrusive I was in despair. Any passing human being smelled like rotten meat. It was as if I were surrounded by the dead. Sometimes the decaying flesh smell alternated with one of rotten fruit, sticky and sickeningly sweet, cloying and insufferable. My acupuncturist was fascinated by the condition, never having treated it before. We talked about many things - childhood illnesses, memories of scents, injuries real or imagined, foods and drinks, habits, health - and then she distributed her magical needles all over me, with many in my head and at my nose. I lay there in her incensed room, listening to an Indian raga, and drifted along, thinking about things. I remembered the link to roses - how I had unexpectedly smelled roses, like a moment of grace, at random periods in my life. I told her about this, and she commented that phantosmia is clearly something I've always had, more or less latently, but that when the subject was roses, why complain? I had three sessions with her, and, like a miracle, the odious odors disappeared.

On the drive in on the third visit, with my symptoms all but obliterated, in that synchronistic way that still surprises, I heard a woman being interviewed on the radio about a book she had just written about phantosmia. I no longer have its title, and in fact, I wasn't tempted to read it. Because this woman determined, with the help of her western-minded, medication-oriented doctor, that phantosmia was a condition brought about by reliance on non-western homeopathies, and that only western medicine could cure it. Since this was the exact opposite of my experience, I wondered at how drastically different human experiences are, and the insights we derive from those experiences. You could say that everything is subjective, and that each of us needs to find the path to our wellness that corresponds to our personal belief system.

In any case, either my belief or my acupuncturist's intuition or both abolished my phantosmia. I remained symptom-free for a long, long time - maybe as long as a year the first time. When it returned, it was changed, less intrusive, more subtle, and only occasional. Now I smelled frying bacon, or rich dark pipe tobacco, or a flashing, piercing perfume, a little too bright, or a cantaloup that was just going off. I returned to my acupuncturist and again she eradicated the smells. But gradually, over time, I realized that I had lost nearly my entire sense of smell, and can only occasionally smell a flower or a meal. And this in fact is what the kindly doctor on the web had predicted - that in most cases, phantosmia signals the onset of the loss of the sense of smell.

In the time since, I've realized how often people will bring something up close to your nose and ask you to smell it. People love smells. I've noticed how the sense of taste is not, as everyone always assumes, destroyed by losing the sense of smell. They're separate senses - each is one of the five - and food still tastes good even though I can't smell it. I'm bereft of the smell of roses, which grow profusely where I'm currently living, and this is one of the greatest losses. I'm thinking of returning to my acupuncturist, and suggesting to her, simply by way of experiment, that we try to introduce a scent or two - say, the David Austen cressida rose, or freshly baked sourdough rye bread - and see if we can implant them. Why not?

If you are reading this and still tormented by phantosmia, write to me. I'll give you my acupuncturist's contact information. If you're far away from Mill Vally, California, you can write to her, or you might ask your acupuncturist to write to her or call her, and find out what she did.