Living without a sense of smell AUG 04 2015
Nick Johnson slammed his head on the ice while playing hockey last year and hasn't been able to smell anything since then.
At the time of his accident, Nick's wife was eight months pregnant with their second child. Over lunch, he says: "I joke I can't smell my daughter's diaper. But I can't smell my daughter. She was up at 4 o'clock this morning. I was holding her, we were laying in bed. I know what my son smelt like as a little baby, as a young kid. Sometimes not so good, but he still had that great little kid smell to him. With her, I've never experienced that."
Much of the article focuses on research about how smell can send signals we are not aware of (e.g. body odor can "smell" like stress), but my favorite thing about smell is its connection to memory...which makes the quote above all the more poignant. There are certain scents that when I smell them, they zap me so vividly back to when I was a kid or in college...it's like time travel.
