I don't usually post, but I'll jump in here. That's my theory too. I'm one
of the head trauma anosmiacs. I had no sense of smell whatsoever for a
while after my injury 8 months ago. Now I can smell a few things correctly
and a few other things incorrectly.

I can make out bell pepper clearly - it's a normal smell for me. I can kind
of make out vanilla - it's close to what it should be. I can detect coffee
- it's that most disgusting smell, not anywhere near what it should smell
like.

I liken what happened to me to cutting a large phone cable - all my
whatevers (don't feel like looking up that term again) were severed
according to my doctor - and when you cut a large phone cable, you get all
those different colored little wires that you need to hook back up
correctly. A lot of my wires are still apart and a mess (no smell), my bell
pepper wire(s) are back together, my vanilla wire(s) are in the process of
getting fixed. There seem to be some problems with my coffee wires - either
they're hooked up wrong or only some of them are ok so far. (Even though
it's a disgusting smell, I like to walk by the coffee maker in the office
and smell the coffee since it's one of the things I can smell - only people
here would understand that...)

And for those who are interested, I saw a few local doctors (Arizona, USA)
and was told pretty much I may or may not get my smell back and that was
that. I've been reading everything I can, but have not pursued anything
else. I take Flonase and Advair for unrelated reasons (allergies and
asthma). I try to take multivitamins daily, but no mega doses or anything.
I've thought about accupuncture, but don't like needles. (Looking at
treatments that would cause no harm.) At this point I'm happy with the
progress I've made, but I would like to make more, but I'm thinking in my
case it may just be a factor of time. (If I was still totally without
smell, I'm sure I would be saying something different here.)

Lisa

On 3/1/06, patty101@... <patty101@...> wrote:
>
>
> Thats interesting Mick. I didnt realize that different distortions have
> different causes. Where can I read more about that? I have a theory that
> normal
> smells are a combination of many components (or different smelling
> molecules)
> and that those of us who have distortions are just smelling one of these
> rather than the whole. I call it "notes". We may smell one note of a
> rose and it
> smells horrible....but the entire symphony of notes is wonderful. Damn I
> miss smelling roses!
> Patty
>
> ------------------------------
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]