Anosmia

THIS BLOG IS ABOUT LIFE AS AN ANOSMIC - SOMEONE WITHOUT A SENSE OF SMELL. I AM A 22 YEAR OLD MA STUDENT IN LONDON AND HAVEN'T HAD A WHIFF OF ANYTHING IN ABOUT 15 YEARS. I AM WRITING THIS TO RAISE AWARENESS OF THIS INVISIBLE DISABILITY AND WILL UPDATE EVERY TIME THERE'S SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT.

Saturday 15 March 2014

This one has numbers in it

I went to London today and for the first time in my life, met other anosmics. It was a bit weird really, because not having a sense of smell doesn't leave any visible mark on its sufferers, so it was fun trying to guess who was anosmic and who was moral support. It was a pretty inspiring evening, listening to other peoples experiences and how they cope with the lack of odour in their life.

I spoke to one woman who is pretty much the pioneer of smell training, which, as I've mentioned before is the process of smelling different essential oils every day in order to reawaken the olfactory nerve. I have some more information from her that I'm going to read through properly later, but the thing I found most interesting is that she recorded her findings, so she could make a chart of her progress (or lack of). I think that this is something that I might start doing as it might make the whole thing seem more productive rather than disheartening. I know that my last blog post was pretty sad and angry, but now I've had a bit more time to come to terms with it, I think I'm ready to start being proactive about it again.

There was another woman who had lost her sense of smell in an ice skating accident; shed fallen on her backside and then the back of her head. Her partner assumed that it was rapid movement that had been the trigger; an MRI scan proved that it was in fact nerve damage. Another lady described herself as 'in remission'. Her sense of smell had gradually faded and now it was gradual coming back. She didn't want to be too excited about it however, as she said that she wasn't sure if it could just go again. Also, she didn't want to feel like she was being unsupportive of other anosmics.

This last point kind of struck a chord with me, and it's s pretty big and important one. You don't have to be a sufferer of anosmia personally to support those who are. My parents have been a great help and positive influence in my personal struggle and neither of them have it. This is the attitude that I would like to change. Something that came up quite a lot over the course of the evening was the fact that if it was a disability that could be seen, then there would be a lot more sympathy and a lot more being done about it. Raising awareness of anosmia is a real challenge, because the people that have it just look like everybody else. They don't have hearing aids, or dark glasses, or walk with a limp. Perhaps if you were to cut off all our noses (because why not? They don't do anything for us anymore) then we would have the sympathy and the research that we deserve. Here are some statistics from a surgery conducted in December 2013;

There are 3.25 million anosmics in the UK.

60% of anosmics feel alone or isolated because of their disability
45% suffer from depression
55% have difficulty with relationships with family/friends/partners
94% no longer appreciate food

How is this okay?

Please, spread the word. Just bring anosmia up one day as a fun discussion to have with your friends and family. Think about the impact not having a sense of smell would have on your life. Spend a day with a clothes peg on your nose to understand what we go through on a daily business. Don't remember people or places. Eat cardboard. Accidentally drink gone off milk. Anosmia isn't even in the Microsoft dictionary. Get angry, get upset, get confused. Just whatever you do, please do not write this off as a minor thing that some people are vaguely complaining about. Anosmia is a condition and a disability the same way that anything else you can think of is. I'm sorry that you haven't been made aware of it from an early age like you were other things, but believe me, I am too am very aware of how inexperienced the medial profession are when it comes to this. I just don't understand how can you ignore something that, despite being an issue within itself, is such a large trigger for so many other recognised problems.