Avoiding gruesome odors is my first line of defense. There’s a coffee shop nearby that I simply won’t enter. It’s jam-packed with wooden barrels of reeking coffee beans; locals complain they can smell the roasting blocks away. I send my husband to buy coffee while I wait in the car with the windows up.
I’ve tried the opposite tactic, going out of my way to imprint favorite perfumes, fresh flowers, that wonderful bakery smell. Alas, my phantosmia specializes in the disagreeable.
— Columnist Jane G Andrews in A Pungent Life: The Smells in My Head at The New York Times. Many thanks to contrabassa for the link!
Barrels of coffee beans sounds good to me….but maybe it wouldn’t be good to, say, live next door to that. Even very good smells can wear on you if you can’t get away. But that sounds like the sort of place I’d step through the doors just for a sniff!
…then I read the article. Wow, who know this even existed? I know it’s horrible when a bad smell gets in your head but can’t imagine what it would be like to have it there for a year or more! ack.
It really is fascinating isn’t it? And it almost seems like it would be linked to anxiety somehow, and thus, depression. I can’t blame her for crying when she took her dog out on a walk and ran into the fertilizer. Coffee beans following you around is one thing, but imagine dog poop. 😛
I think you’re absolutely right about it being linked to anxiety. I’d love to have her as a therapy client, actually. I think there are things that would work–doesn’t seem like she’s willing to try anything, though, which is curious.
Hard to say which would be worse: phantosmia or anosmia.
Probably depends on whether the anosmia existed from birth or not.
Hideous thought! Haunted by vile smells.
And I thought I was unlucky because whenever I touch ground coffee or beans, my hands smell of onions and diesel fuel for hours.
Sheesh; that’s nothing.
My hands do that too, esp. with garlic.
My fingers soak up and hang onto garlic smell. I LOVE garlic, but not as a perfume thank you very much. Hand washing, hand lotions, lemon juice, etc. – doesn’t get rid of the smell. I have found that rubbing my fingers with stainless steel is effective though.
And of course after I chop garlic or onions I keep constantly SNIFFING my fingertips — instead of ignoring them — just to ASSURE myself that they do indeed stink. Silly behavior. And yes, stainless steel or lemon rind seem to do the trick.
Still, I think I’d rather be phantosmic than anosmic, to answer your question above.
How timely is this! I certainly don’t have the same problem this woman has, but my co-worker and I have been complaining about our boss’s perfume – thankfully she doesn’t work in our office, only stops in. It’s very sharp, nose singeing and awful. She was just here and the air is still permeated with the stuff!
The worst of it is that the last two times recently that she’s come in, I’ve had on Chamade. So now of course I’m associating Chamade with that awful scent!
Aw, too bad!
What a bizzare and very unfortunate condition.
Agree.
Thanks for posting the link, Robin! I think the perfumista’s version of this is smelling (vile celebrity fragrance of the moth) everywhere they go. 😉
Yes, imagine!
This recalls Angela’s adventures in Victoria’s Secret and Bath and Body Works. Those smells are bad enough for the few seconds I endure them while passing them in the mall… Though I do adore the smell of a gardening shop or book store. We have one here that has a Starbucks in it, and I love walking in to be enveloped in the fragrance of paper and coffee. I’d buy a perfume that smelled that way for sure. 😉
I have a friend who, due to an especially rare disorder, can’t smell. He just compares it to being born deaf and having no idea of the nuances he’s missing. It rarely bothers him, and he can’t say whether his sense of taste is muted as well given it’s all he’s ever known.
Another friend of mine had a brain tumor removed and lost her sense of smell. She was horribly distressed since she grew a lot of herbs and such for the smell and flavor, and when her neurologist said this sense was likely gone for good, she couldn’t get past how much she’d lost. One afternoon, I hugged her while wearing CSP’s Vanille Mokha, and she just grabbed my shoulders and sniffed my shirt collar exclaiming,”I can smell you!” It was such an amazing moment for both of us, and I bought her some Vanille Mokha to spray about in the hopes it may help her condition improve. The reemergence of citrus aromas also happened when she and I were on the phone and she was having an orange for breakfast and noted she could smell the fruit while walking around her tiny apartment. Our senses are fascinating abilities, and I think my four fully functioning senses have actually grown far more acute given my minimal sight. Perfume is just a perfect fit. 🙂
Thanks for sharing all that — what a nice story about your friend!
(and I’d buy Eau de Starbucks)
Luca Turin described a case like this, with a Scottish woman who had smelled horrid things for years. He identified it as something similar to epilepsy, and she was treated with anti-epilepsy drugs, apparently successfully. I’m surprised the writer hasn’t tried all the recommended treatments if the problem really bothers her.
I’d forgotten that story, thanks!
I used to work at the Starbucks roasting plant in Seattle (before they closed it down) and I loved – and still love – the smell of roasting coffee. Except for the day they roasted French Roast. When I got home, my clothes smelled like they’d been in a fire.
I am trying to commit to memory the smell of my black kitty Sorscha. She’s ill and my vet has done everything for her he can. She’s barely eating and drinking anymore so I know I’ll have to put her to sleep probably sometime this week. I’ve been burying my nose in her fur and sniffing the top of her head. :*(
So sorry about your kitty 🙁
Oh, I’m so sorry! I know what you mean about the smell of the fur. Each of my cats has their own little sweet smell. One of my cats passed away two years ago, and one way for me to conjure up his memory is to imagine the smell of Kix cereal and milk–swear to God, that’s what he smelled like! Again, so sorry about your kitty. 🙁
Thank you both for your sympathies. Trying to hold it together right now and not doing a very good job. 🙁 I totally know what you mean about the Kix & milk smell, Miss Kitty. One of my older cats had a very pleasant, comforting cereal smell about her, especially right on top of her head. Sorscha has this nice inky smell to her body fur which fits since she’s completely jet black.
I’m so sorry to hear about your kitty….and I know exactly what you mean about their smell. My middle Rottie, C, has this particularly sweet smell, just at the junction of the top of his head and his ear. When I’m particularly distressed I will just kiss that spot and inhale the smell until he gives this completely exasperated sigh, as if to say “enough already! you’re kissing a hole in my head!”.
Letting go is hard (I’ve had to do it 4 times and C’s dad is now 11, with congestive heart failure)…but the pain does ease with a bit of time.
xo
I love your description of C. I can just imagine it. lol
You’d think I’d be used to it by now. I’ve done this three times before but it’s getting harder each time instead of easier. At least the other kitties I had to put down were in full-blown, obvious suffering. Other than refusing to eat and drink and being a little less active, she won’t show if she’s suffering. And I’m such a blubbering mess about it I’m having a hard time telling if I’m holding out on going to the vet for her sake or mine.
I almost sent you the link to this story too, Robin, but was too addled to remember! I’ve actually had episodes of phantosmia myself — not nearly so severe as the woman in this article, but still disconcerting. It isn’t that I can’t smell anything else, just that an awful smell keeps reappearing to me although it definitely isn’t present. And yes, it is always something really unpleasant (one I smelled for years starts with “d” and ends with “a,” and I don’t even want to think about it, let alone write it!). Probably unrelated, but I also tend to smell nasty stuff in perfume that other people don’t detect.
That’s so interesting…and it must be very disconcerting. Glad it is not constant, that would be horrid.