Driving down Government Road, my husband makes a snort of sorts.
He shakes his head then rubs his nose.
“What?” I ask.
“Skunk,” he says.
I nod.
This is a scenario that plays out daily in my family.
Always has.
I was born with meaning I can’t smell — anything.
It is no big deal.
Sure, I have had a few close calls with toxic fumes I didn’t detect, but otherwise, it has always seemed like a bonus not to smell.
After all, I raised four boys.
But with folks losing their sense of smell due to COVID-19, an editor friend encouraged me to write about my “condition.”
“Wouldn’t that be self-indulgent?” asked I.
“You wrote about not getting a facelift; that was self-indulgent,” said he.
Touché.
So, I called up , to learn more about smell and the lack thereof.
Chadha stressed that if something is absent from birth, that loss is very different from the experience of someone who suddenly loses their sense of smell, as with COVID-19.
“It really affects them day-to-day. Not only if their job is dependent on it, but if it affects some of their pleasures,” he said.
Folks like me who have never smelled develop other ways of detecting stimuli in the environment over time, he noted.
For those who lose smell suddenly, it is like the colour goes out of the world.
So why does smell go with COVID?
“With COVID, or with any acquired loss of sense of smell, it is typically an injury to the olfactory sense itself; ...basically, the senses in the nose that pick up the smell chemicals, they can be damaged not just by COVID, but by any viral infection.”
The coronavirus seems to have more of a propensity to damage the sense of smell than other viral infections, he added.
“It is quite a significant, acute injury to the smell receptors,” he said.
it seems.
“The interesting thing about olfactory fibres is they are one of the few nerves that can regenerate very well. Most nerve fibres, when they are damaged, they can’t completely regenerate or not regenerate well, but that can happen with the olfactory fibres.”
Chadha said that there isn’t a clear understanding of how prevalent congenital anosmia is.
There is no cure or treatment for it, and it isn’t much of an obstacle in life, so folks aren’t running to the doctor in droves worried about it.
Sense of taste is impacted for people like me. I know this because I was a mother before I realized that there were different tastes to Freezies, rather than just a variety of colours.
But us non-smellers don’t have an absence of taste, and most don’t have a complete lack of smell.
“Sweet, salt, bitter,” Chadha said. “I would expect someone like you to tell the difference between something that has lemon juice in it or doesn’t. But I wouldn’t expect you to be able to tell the difference between a medium-expense bottle of wine and an expensive one because those are typically more odour-based.”
So, why can’t I smell?
Chadha said there are basically two categories of causes for congenital anosmia — structural defects and genetic disorders.
The first is a defect in the development of the olfactory bulb.
Meaning, there is likely simply not the structure for smell.
“Think of it as not having an eye,” he said, relating it to sight.
Or the olfactory bulb could be there but not functioning effectively.
Genetic disorders, such as , may also come with an absence of smell.
If you can’t smell, I would love to hear about your experience. We can compare notes. Drop me a line at [email protected].
