My Not So Super Power…

I’ve written a lot about my disease, a lot about how sarcoidosis impacts my life. But I don’t think I have ever written about one of the oddest symptoms I experience and perhaps one of the most obnoxious. I smell strange things! I smell strange things all the time. My husband often says that my “sniffer” is broken because I smell things that are not there. I smell the invisible. It’s my not so super power.

I smell cigars and no one in my house smokes. I smell cat pee and we don’t have a cat. I smell all manner of the most unpleasant smells that simply don’t exist. Well, they exist but just not where and when I am smelling them. See why it’s not such a super power. Very annoying!

And, since our sense of smell is highly connected to our sense of taste, food doesn’t taste that good to me anymore. In fact, between the smells and the side effects of my medication almost everything I eat and everything I taste has a metal or mildew flavor to it. Or at least what I would guess mildewy metal tastes like, if I were ever to eat such a thing! Yuck!

One of the symptoms of sarcoidosis is a loss of appetite that is often accompanied by unintentional weight loss. Well…duh…no wonder! If everything smells foul and food tastes like metal then it makes perfect sense that eating is no longer a pleasure.

My strange sense of smell has become something of joke in our house. I’ll get so mad because I think the dogs rolled in some dead animal outside or they farted or my husband farted or someone, hopefully not me, has body odor. And none of these things will be true. It’s just me smelling my invisible smells. It’s so frustrating.

There are times these smells keep me awake at night because they are so powerful. How vexing is that? Augh! Last night was one of those nights. All night I smelled a dank, heavy, moldy, smokey smell. Sometimes it is so bad I nearly gag.

I can’t get these smells out of my nose until they decide to go away. I can’t get rid of them until as suddenly as they showed up, they dissipate. It makes me feel like I am a crazy person. I don’t need any thing else to make me feel crazier than I already might be! I mean really, why can’t I have a real superpower instead!

It’s just plain maddening!