http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/326735298

Remembering smell

In November 2005, Bonnie Blodgett was whacked with a nasty cold. After a quick shot of a popular nasal spray up each nostril, the back of her nose was on fire. With that, Blodgett-a professional garden writer devoted to the sensual pleasures of garden and kitchen-was launched on a journey through the senses, the psyche, and the sciences. Her olfactory nerve was destroyed, perhaps forever. She had lost her sense of smell. Phantosmia-a constant stench of "every disgusting thing you can think of tossed into a blender and pureed"--Is the first disorienting stage. It's the brain's attempt, as Blodgett vividly conveys, to compensate for loss by conjuring up a tortured facsimile. As the hallucinations fade and anosmia (no smell at all) moves in to take their place, Blodgett is beset by questions: Why are smell and mood hand-in-hand' How are smell disorders linked to other diseases' What is taste without flavor' Blodgett's provocative conversations with renowned geneticists, smell dysfunction experts, neurobiologists, chefs, and others ultimately lead to a life-altering understanding of smell, and to the most transformative lesson of all: the olfactory nerve, in ways unlike any other in the human body has the extraordinary power to heal.

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