Loss of smell and taste after head injury

@gwenrn74 - I'm really sorry about your suffering. It sounds like you've experienced a lot of losses.

Being wide awake for 4 days sounds really difficult. If you've not yet checked out the Mayo Clinic Connect Sleep Health support group https://connect.mayoclinic.org/group/sleep-health, there might be some members there with information to share from their experiences with insomnia.

Consider checking with your doctor on if you can do a sleep study; that can determine if you have sleep apnea, and also give you tools to help you get to sleep. My TBI mostly injured my frontal (emotional, smell and taste) and left temporal (finding words and numbers) lobes. If I can't sleep I count in increments of numbers, so backwards or forward in odd or even numbers. I basically bore myself back to sleep. All of the stress and the hardship that you are dealt is also hard on sleep. I hope you can find ways to escape every day, if even for a few minutes or hours.

I'm in the clutches of workmans compensation. i've asked for a sleep study since June 2024. The psychiatrist, who manages my sleep meds, isn't part of WC and the WC MD, doesn' t seen a sleep study as a value add. I can go 4-7 days without sleep, (the least being 4 days- the most 7 days. I had "preexisting conditions" of insomnia, depression and anxiety, so WC is brushing this off.

I can feel at times, suicidal- as in I'll sleep when I'm dead. Yet, everyone agrees, sleep is healing. I've counted up to 10k sheep and backwards from 10k to zero. I've done cursive writing. I tried alcohol- which made everything worse. MMJ gummies - meh- too hung over or a brain fog- I don't care for that and certainly don't want to drive foggy.

I too lost most of my senses of taste and smell, but I am the cook! I cook for others and I follow tried and true recipes, but always looking for new recipes to try out on my family. Mistakes are made but favorites are found. I cook for them, not for me. I do have to be careful chopping red peppers and not my fingers. Well, time to make my famous peanut brittle - a gift for the shop that services my car.

Hi, @slowrunner1 - I see you've joined Mayo Clinic Connect recently, so I wanted to welcome you.

I also wanted to encourage you to follow and check out discussions in our Stroke & Cerebrovascular Diseases support group on Connect https://connect.mayoclinic.org/group/cerebrovascular-diseases/.

It's very impressive that you still run and walk after your right frontal brain bleed stroke and that you are competing in road races in your 80s.

Do you know what caused you to lose your sense of taste and smell?

Hi Lisa
It was gradual, not sure but became more noticeable after the stroke. Age? maybe 70 years of cheap beer and gin but, once in awhile good bourbon -
or accompanying cigars, cigarrettes, pipe, hookah. used to pick butts off thestreet when I was six years old, BUT NEVER anything else. I do like Melinda's Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce. Clears the sinuses.
I am so lucky.

I am so sorry for your accident and its aftermath!
I understand completely what feelings you are experiencing as I suffered a TBI and I just marked my 19th year from when it happened yesterday (ST Patrick’s Day).

The good news is there comes a point when your brain and its injury are not the 1st thing you’ll think about when you wake in the morning and the last thing you think about when you lay your head down at night (and every minute in between 😢).

I also lost my smell & taste and the bad news is that they never came back. I think it is the result of whether membranes that control smell & taste have either been stretched and will right themselves one day or they were completely severed which I guess is what happened to mine.

For some strange reason I have found it to be quite fascinating living without smell & taste! I also understand the your love of baking is now compromised and that must feel terrible!

Please feel free to reach out to me if you would like to talk some more about this. I would be honored to answer any questions or just listen to your experience. Perhaps I can help. I do not judge as I have just gotten my certification as a Recovery Support Specialist so I appreciate the need for people to reach out to someone who has “lived experience” with the same issue ❤️

Hi,
Thank you for your comments. I found a nose research group in Massachusetts, who are looking for subjects. You have to be 19-60 years old to participate.

There is a fascinating book called Yoga and the Eye, and it helps to heal ! It's written by 2 optometrists. I found a copy on Thrift Books.

That sounds so cool!
What are they trying to learn?