Remembering Smell Read Online Free PDF Page A

rise and shine. Time to jolt the heart into overdrive and turn on the faucet marked ACID to begin the gastrointestinal slow burn. Sleep was now out of the question unless I was willing to drug myself with a megadose of those little yellow pills, the tranquilizer called Ativan, which I wasn't, because as bad as this was, giving in to fear would be worse.
    Cam seemed to have bought my misleading portrayal of Dr. Cushing. The poor man was undoubtedly a quack. Cam ridiculed the notion that a nasal spray could destroy a person's sense of smell. That it was he who'd recommended I use Zicam cemented his conviction that the cause was not some innocuous gel but the cold itself—"if in fact you actually
have
lost your smell."
    Dr. Cushing called with good news: the CT scan was clear. I did not have a brain tumor. I heard a click on the upstairs line. Cam joined the conversation. The doctor reiterated that my anosmia was almost certainly permanent. He repeated his theory that Zicam was the cause, adding that Cam shouldn't blame himself; millions of people were using the stuff, even though it had only a placebo effect at best, and loss of olfactory function was an exceedingly rare, albeit tragic, consequence. He also told Cam that "there is no test."
    This was in response to my husband's suggestion that he "stick something up there and take a look." Feeling defensive on the doctor's behalf, especially in light of my unkind remarks the night before, I reminded him that Dr. Cushing already
had
taken a look.
    There was a test that I could self-administer, the doctor said. The University of Pennsylvania Smell Inventory Test ( UPSIT ) rates the severity and specificity of smell loss. It measures a person's ability to identify up to forty different odors. Dr. Cushing said he'd found such tests unhelpful, however. "If patients tell me they can identify smells, I know they're probably lying."
    While I tried to interpret this bizarre statement, Cam used it as the basis for his budding theory of a psychosomatic cause for my phantosmia. He suggested to Dr. Cushing that maybe I was just imagining all this. "She gets migraine headaches too," he told the doctor. "Emotional stress can have physical manifestations, isn't that so?"
    Dr. Cushing said he left that sort of thing to the psychiatrists and maybe I should see one. All he had to go on was my own testimony that I was smelling foul odors, a classic sign of a damaged receptor sheet. Then he wished us both good luck and reminded me to come back in three weeks so he could check my "progress." He signed off on what he must have thought sounded like a positive note: "Remember what I said. You won't be smelling a thing by Christmas. The treatment usually takes about four days to start working."
    Cam immediately suggested we see a psychiatrist. He said he'd come with me. If the psychiatrist believed, as Cam did, that the awful odors were psychological, then all I'd have to do was "let them go" and get on with the task of sorting out the real cause of my distress. The psychiatrist would help me. We'd have long talks. Eventually we'd talk my troubles away.

    "You are obviously extremely anxious," the psychiatrist said.
    Then he asked me how my mood was, apart from the anxiety, and had me count backward from one hundred by sevens. I got to ninety-three. What was going on? I used to be able to count backward by sevens.
    Apparently satisfied, the psychiatrist scribbled the name of a new drug on a prescription pad, along with an Ativan refill. The drug was Lexapro, one of the SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) that Dr. Cushing had told me about. The Ativan would keep my anxiety under control while the SSRI built up in my system. That could take a month or more. "Everyone reacts differently." The SSRI, if it worked, would deal with the chemical cause of my tendency to hit the panic button, as Cam often referred to that aspect of my personality. And it was not addictive. Nor would it put me into an