Glad Farewell to Bile

Two nights ago I awoke to my 5 year-old son Justin standing next to my bed proclaiming, "Dad, I frow up on my bed."

Fabulous.

Who doesn't love to wake up in the middle of the night to clean up vomit? I guess it's one of those givens for parents. Anyway, it was dark, and when I got in there, I could see a dark area, but it didn't smell too strongly, so I thought, "Not too bad." I wrapped up the blankets and sheets and put them in the washer.

Apparently it was much worse than I realized. It had gotten on the carpet, all over my son, and on my shirt while I was putting things in the washer. (I know--thanks for the great mental image.)

So, it appears that I have lost, or at least partially lost, the ability to smell bile (vomit). I have to admit that if it's gone, I'm not broken-hearted. I suppose it's important to know if you smell foul to others; which I guess would be one of the big downsides to full anosmics. But, I enjoyed the bliss of not detecting the putrid odor that night.

I don't know if this particular olfactory recognition is gone completely, or just sporadically, but I'm definitely not going to be chasing miscellaneous stomach flu sufferers to find out...

Olfactory Reminiscence

What the??? The craziest thing happened today! I went into the bathroom where I work, and the maintenance guy had just cleaned up--apparently having used a lot of chlorine bleach. For the first time in years, I smelled the chlorine! I drew in deep breaths through my nose and basked in the familiar smells and memories. I let myself wander back in my mind to the many swimming parties with my friends in Phoenix and a vivid, previously-forgotten memory of the early-morning, summer swims with my best friend Sean Buck in his pool (after having warm coke and cold pizza for breakfast). I remembered how I used to pretty much live at his house in the summertime, and we'd wake up, and alternate the entire day between basketball, swimming, and TV. During the early afternoon, nothing was on, and in our search for entertainment, we landed on PBS with Bob Ross, the Happy Painter. We actually even went to Standard Brands paint (across the field) and bought all the colors (cadmium blue, cadmium yellow, etc.) so we could paint along with him. We tried that once, and when our paintings sucked, we ditched that effort, and increased the ratio of basketball and swimming in the early afternoons.

Then, as quickly as it came, it was gone. I thought maybe I had just become accustomed to it, so I left the bathroom, went across the street to get a drink (44 oz Dr. Pepper, of course,) and came back to try and smell the chlorine. No luck. It was gone. I asked some random guy if it smelled like chlorine in there.

"Yeah."

"Bummer."

Is that crazy? Do other hyposmics get smells back for a short time? What is going on? Has anyone ever experienced this? Is this just another proof that it's the Dr. Pepper?

Regardless, it was fun to relic in a couple of forgotten smell-triggered memories.