Sense memory

When I was in my early twenties, I lived in the D.C. suburbs of Maryland. I had just graduated from college and had a job working at my University's library. One night, about a month into working the job, I began to feel very sick. I hurt like I had never hurt before. The pain started and then got worse and worse.

I drove myself home and to the hospital (stopping off for a change of clothes just in case--my momma always said to change your underwear before going to the hospital). Fourteen hours later, I no longer had an appendix. I'll spare you the details of my grabbing the nurse and demanding more demerol.

The one thing that really bothered me after the surgery was that I kept smelling this smell I had never smelled before. While convalescing some days after the surgery, I happened to touch the stapled wound. A few minutes later, I had my hand near my nose. Lo and behold, I smelled the smell. I decided that I was smelling the inside of me.

I didn't mind the way it smelled, actually. But it did smell foreign. And (believe me if you want) it gradually went away as the surgery incision healed. This was in the days before laproscopic surgery, so the incision was several inches long. I have not had surgery since and I have not smelled that smell.

For the past few months, however, things have smelled different to me. Not all the time. But some of the time. I can't put my finger (or my olfactory senses on, if you'd like me to be precise) on it. I can say that I think my nose is either picking up something different or has had a sea change in the way it smells. Sometimes it smells a little like garlic, sometimes it just smells funny.

At first my (considerable) paranoia made me ask Honey to smell me over and over to make sure I wasn't the one who smelled funny. She said it wasn't me.

I don't know if my sense of smell will return to normal. I miss trusting it.

Smell, "they" say, is the strongest memory trigger of the senses. I believe that to be true. Smelling a certain kind of sewage makes me think of Rome, which, in turn, makes me happy. I think if I ever smelled the "inside of me" smell again, I would remember what it was like to be young and scared and excited. Appendectomy as adventure, I guess.

This past weekend, I was on the east coast (more on that later). The leaves had changed and when it rained Sunday, I went out on the famous bloggers' back porch and smelled the fresh morning. It smelled right and lovely and not like the inside of anything.