I’m An Anosmiac
No, I’m not afraid of advancing years
It’s official. I’m a certified anosmiac.
That doesn’t mean I’m terminally forgetful although at my age I wouldn’t be surprised if that diagnosis is also near at hand.
Rather, it means that my olfactory ability has disappeared. In short, I can’t smell.
I think this new condition developed some time in the last ten years but I can’t say for sure. Unlike the loss of one’s vision or the loss of a limb, it’s often difficult to pinpoint exactly when a smell-related disability began.
With a gradual disappearance of the sense of smell, one doesn’t miss it much at first. Familiar smells simply slowly fade away until one day you realize they’re entirely gone.
Even in the case of a quick onset, anosmia isn’t quite the traumatic event that other losses are. Thus, the tendency is to assume that some of one’s sense of smell still remains long after it has, in fact, disappeared for good.
Gradually, I came to accept that I wasn’t just suffering from hyposmia (a reduced sense of smell) but instead had lost the entire range of sniffability. My complete lack of odor detection ability eventually became apparent when those around me doubled over in disgust at some horrendous smell that left me completely unaffected.
