Three years ago Elizabeth Zierah caught a cold; a few weeks later she was back to normal… except that she had lost her sense of smell. In Slate, she writes about the miseries of losing the sense of smell (and in the process, taste).
I lost normal function on the left side of my body from a stroke when I was 30, and although I’ve had a strong recovery, I still have limited fine-motor control in my left hand, I walk with a limp, and I can’t feel much on my affected side. Yet without hesitation I can say that losing my sense of smell has been more traumatic than adapting to the disabling effects of the stroke. As the scentless and flavorless days passed, I felt trapped inside my own head, a kind of bodily claustrophobia, disassociated. It was as though I were watching a movie of my own life. When we see actors in a love scene, we accept that we can’t smell the sweat; when they take a sip of wine, we don’t expect to taste the grapes. That’s how I felt, like an observer watching the character of me.
via Mind Hacks