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Loss of smell and taste after head injury
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) | Last Active: Feb 9 12:34pm | Replies (44)Comment receiving replies
HI,
I, personally don't have BO or a bad smell.
My sense of smell is aware that some things smell bad / rotten. I walked out to my lanai in HI, and there was a smell. (I can't smell flowers or salt air) I asked my husband to identify the smell. And he said it was MMJ. I know what that smells like, I live in Denver , the Mile High City. But to me it was an unidentifiable odor. When I walk out of the Denver house, I sniff the air, and one day, there was a smell i can't identify. I asked husband and he said it was a chemical smell. This is January, so they are not spraying for ash borer or mosquitos.
Losing my sense of taste and smell is better than Ozempic. I'm down 40 pounds. I force myself to eat a navel orange, and there is nothing- no orange no smell no taste. It's very discouraging. The smell of onions and garlic is stench of dear rat. Some restaurants, I can't even go into bc it's in the air. My own cooking is now bland. Forget starbucks, truck stops, church lobbies where they serve coffee. Stench of dead rat. I can go on and on, but I won't.
It's not really a support group. I just found a nose research group- all PhDs and they said this was all normal in head injured populations.
Replies to "HI, I, personally don't have BO or a bad smell. My sense of smell is aware..."
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It helps some when one can't taste things to have more texture and temperature variation in food, so at least you have those sensations. With me, the grieving process takes about 1.5 years with a major loss. My TBI was 31 years ago, and my olfactory bulbs were impacted by the injury. It took a few months to be able to taste anything, and then it was butter, chicken, and chocolate. Didn't do much for controlling my weight, but did bring to mind the "everything tastes like chicken" joke. After a year and a half I started to taste more things, but the complexity and strength of flavor was muted. After 8 years I could taste most things, enough that I didn't know what I was missing. Beef was the last. I still can't tolerate the smells of cigarettes or perfume, and am probably not detecting some odors. Smell and taste are a major (hopefully temporary) loss, hopefully you can fill that space by finding fun interests, hobbies, or other escapes.