Remembering Smell

by Bonnie Blodgett

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618861882
• ISBN13: 9780618861880
• Release Date: June 2010
• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Sloppy book, but compelling for those who've lived it.

I see from some of the other reviews that the audience for this book is rather self-selecting. Given how low in importance the general population rates the subject matter, that's to be expected. But for fellow sufferers, and the people who care about them, the book is compelling, eye-opening. It's a shame that it's so sloppily edited: the author needed a sit-down with a good editor who would ask her what kind of book she intended to write: a personal memoir, a disease-of-the-week sob-fest, or (nudge, nudge) a story about a woman fundamentally affected by a little-understood and lightly-regarded medical catastrophe, and how she educated herself and came to terms with it. This is an interesting woman, so if you can good-humouredly put up with the occasional personal digression, you'll be fine. If you're a fellow sufferer, you'll quickly get hooked because you'll find familiar "friends" in here, like phantosmia: the brain's initial response to anosmia by creating strong unpleasant smells out of thin air. Did you know there was a word for it? I certainly didn't. The real value in the book is how doggedly she did the research, how much thought she has put into how the condition affects her, and how competently she lays out some of the many non-obvious consequences of anosmia, including depression and reduced libido. If you are a fellow-sufferer whose approach to the problem has been like mine - just soldier on and think about it as little as possible - you might also find something familiar in here that will knock you sideways, like I was when she mentioned that she no longer reads fiction. Reads fiction? What POSSIBLE connec... but it's there, if you crawl inside your head and look for it. This lady did, then wrote about it, and my last 25 years suddenly became a little clearer to me. She doesn't use the word, but what she describes here is a debilitating condition that has quite a bit in common with autism: sufferers are permanently cut off from several realms of human interaction. In short: anosmia stinks.

You will never take smell for granted again

Remembering Smell is a beautiful combination of history, science, and memoir. Bonnie Blodgett seamlessly weaves together these three elements, and you come away from the book with layers of knowledge. In the most basic terms the book tells the story of Blodgett losing her sense of smell, and what that was like. But this short synopsis can't even begin to describe the careful craftsmanship of her writing. She infuses the story with scientific studies, psychiatric studies, and history. As you read, you begin to realize all of the ways in which smell permeates our lives, and how it grounds and orients us. Imagine your husband/wife/partner without smell. Imagine not knowing if things taste right when you're cooking. Imagine not knowing when the garbage needs to go out, when something's burning on the stove, or when milk has gone by. Since reading this book, I have gained a strong appreciation for the smells all around me and how they help me navigate the world. It has completely changed my perspective on the senses. If someone now asked me which sense I could most do without, smell would be the last thing I would give up.

Fantastic popular science memoir - informative and personal

REMEMBERING SMELL is an excellent medical memoir. Bonnie Blodgett describes how she lost her sense of smell following a spritz of Zicam, finding it replaced by horrendous smells all the time as her brain went into a subconscious panic attack before eventually entering an odorless world. She describes how the loss of smell, something that strikes many poeple as minor, impacts her life in very fundamental and debilitating ways. Blodgett balances her personal experiences with an excellent summary of the medical science and research underlying her condition. The extensive reserach she conducted to understand her condition is obvious (especially considering that she had no prior medical expertise) and she translates the complex science into easily-understood prose for a mass audience. This is especially impressive since this is her first publication in this field. The problem with most medical memoirs (in my opinion) is too much self-absorbed introspection and too little explanation of the causes and medical science behind the condition. Maybe I'm in the minority on this, but my patience really dwindles if I have read page after page of emotional turmoil rather than learning something about the experience of living with the condition itself. REMEMBERING SMELL walks the line nicely with a little too much personal detail once in a while but it did teach me a thing of two about the complexity and plasticity of the nervous system.

No Scents At All!

Bonnie Blodgett's Remembering Smell provides a basic introduction to the science of smell and taste in her memoir about the loss of her sense of smell that occurred after use of the cold remedy Zicam. This book might not attract the interest to the average reader, but it is valuable resource for people who have lost their sense of smell or for those close to them. Her experiences rang true and mirrored my own in most regards, especially the perception that the sense of smell--or its loss--is not valued in the same way as other senses. To that, I'm willing to bet Ms. Blodgett would join me in saying, "Well, just try losing your sense of smell for a few months, or a year or a lifetime, and then get back to me."

A loss not to be comprehended by most

"When I lost my sense of smell, all those sensory cues (for romance and sex) vanished. Deprived of my husband's familiar scent, I sometimes forgot he was in bed beside me." - Bonnie Blodgett One October day, Bonnie Blodgett began to experience a distorted sense of smell. All things, no matter what their normal aroma, began to smell as if a concoction of all things putrid put through a blender. An ear, nose and throat specialist she subsequently saw attributed it to the Zicam nasal spray she used several weeks before to combat a cold. On the following Christmas Eve, Bonnie's sense of smell departed entirely. REMEMBERING SMELL is Blodgett's account of her odyssey through an ordeal incomprehensible to most. Lost to her were the comforting scents of her home, the ravishing scents of her garden, and the familiar scents of her husband. Perhaps most devastating, the "tastes" of food were reduced to sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami; foods' flavors, now lost to her, are a function of olfaction. At this point, I must digress for a long, though not completely irrelevant, paragraph. In the summer of 2007, my sense of taste became distorted. I could, and can, no longer sense "sweet". What was sweet now tastes salty. Furthermore, whatever I eat, whether it contains salt or not, tastes salty. And after I eat, for a period of about 90 minutes, I experience a strong salty-sour aftertaste, and my lips seem as if coated in salt. Though I can still sense flavors, the taste of all foods is off. Though some foods may still taste OK depending on what they are, the aftertaste is a punishment that makes the exercise of eating not worthwhile except to ease hunger pangs. The neurologist and ENT specialist are stumped; an MRI of my skull showed nothing pathologic. Before this distortion took hold, I'd lost 30 pounds from frequent visits to the gym. Since that 2007 summer, I've lost an additional 30 pounds because I no longer snack between meals. At 145 pounds with a normal blood pressure, cholesterol, lipid profile and body mass index, I'm perhaps the fittest I've been since I was a teenager. Yet, that fitness comes with the realization that I shall likely never again enjoy fresh peach pie in season, chocolate chip cookies and milk, ice cream, hot chocolate on a cold day, blueberries, melon, a Cadbury bar (my favorite brand!), cheesecake, sweet iced tea on a hot day, and fruit juices - and so many things in the bakeries, shops and supermarkets that I can only turn away from. Though my malady isn't quite the same as Bonnie's, I can relate. Oh, I can so relate. Besides being a narrative of Blodgett's personal loss, REMEMBERING SMELL is also a discussion of the physiology of olfaction and smells' importance in the world we live in - as memory prompts, as an essential part of the eating experience, as elements of literature, as a way of marking territory, e.g. by dogs, as a possible explanation for the action of pheromones, as cultural metaphors for the sensual pass