Stuart Paterson has hyposmia. Though he gradually lost his sense of smell, but not his sense of taste.

Photo courtesy Stuart Paterson

When I was in grade seven, our class went on a field trip to Stratford, Ontario to see My Fair Lady. I don’t remember much about the trip, apart from seeing Colm Feore as Henry Higgins and buying my first jazz CD in the theatre’s gift shop, but the definite highlight of the excursion occurred during the ride home.

Our school bus was passing a freshly manured field that was baking in the hot sun and all our windows were open. Naturally, my friends let out cries of revulsion, yelling “What is that smell?” and holding their noses in disgust.

But I was bewildered. What were they talking about? I didn’t smell anything bad. In fact, I didn’t smell anything at all.

That was the first time I realized I was losing my sense of smell, which, as I have since discovered, is a medical condition called hyposmia.

Now, I can barely smell anything, even if I thrust my nose right up against the stinky item in question and deeply inhale.

A dead skunk? No. Curdled milk? Nothing. Rotting vegetation that was pungent enough to almost make my mother vomit? Not even close.

I’ve never been formally diagnosed, but after researching the subject, I thought what I had was anosmia: a disorder applied to people who can’t smell. But then, I came upon the term hyposmia, which refers to a reduction, not total loss, of the sense.

I can barely smell anything, but every once and a while I catch a faint whiff of something in the air.

I don’t go around trumpeting the fact that I can’t smell, but when I do tell people, there are usually two automatic responses: “I don’t believe you,” and “So I guess you can’t taste, then.”

The weird thing is I can taste. The medical consensus is that approximately 90 per cent of taste is smell, but my taste buds are still quite sensitive. Admittedly, I add spices to a lot of what I eat because I find they help bring out the flavour. But I never have to struggle to taste what I’m chewing.

Dr. Alan Hirsch, founder of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, recommends a simple illustration of how smell is linked to taste. Eat something with a strong flavour, like a chocolate bar, and plug your nose while you chew. “The taste of the chocolate will be similar to chalk,” he writes on the STTRF website.

That should be what I experience every time I eat a piece of chocolate, but it isn’t. Thankfully, I can still savour the rich cocoa as it melts on my tongue.

But what puzzles me even more is how I lost my sense of smell in the first place.

Dr. Hirsch lists a number of causes  including respiratory infections, nasal polyps, exposure to chemicals and a blow to the head. I did have a number of respiratory infections as a kid, but I’ve never had the other three things. At least, not that I can remember (although it’s possible the head trauma gave me amnesia).

I always  imagined an invasive surgery to fix my hyposmia. A doctor slicing up my nose and somehow repairing the olfactory glands, but mild-sounding procedures like vitamin replacement, steroid treatment and the removal of polyps are options utilized by Dr. Hirsch.

Nevertheless, I’m still reluctant to seek treatment. I imagine the remedy is more trouble than it’s worth, especially when I mostly don’t mind having hyposmia in the first place.

But I do recognize how trouble can arise from the condition. For one thing, I can’t smell smoke or leaking gas. I would have to inhale the fumes into my lungs before I was aware of the problem, and if something caught fire while I was sleeping, it could be too late.

If there were a gas leak, God help me. I’d unwittingly strike a match, light a candle, put on some Charlie Parker and be blown to smithereens.

So having working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors is essential, not to mention legal. Once I move out on my own, investing in a gas detector might not be a bad idea, either.

But all safety hazards aside, there’s a simpler, more intrinsic downside to having hyposmia. That is, I’m missing out on all the wonderful fragrances most people take for granted. I can remember the smell of bacon cooking in the morning, but I’ll never smell it again.

Then why don’t I just get it fixed? Because it’s not debilitating enough. Smell is a disposable sense, unlike hearing or sight. If my sense of taste was affected too, I’d seek treatment immediately.
 But so far, having hyposmia has been tolerable.

I mean, it’s certainly not worth causing a stink over.