Have you ever plugged your nose while swallowing a nasty medication? I have more times than I care to count. Why do you plug your nose? Because it prevents you from smelling the medicine, and smell accounts for most of our taste.
Now imagine plugging your nose every time you eat. That’s basically what my experience has been with food for the past month. My taste buds have been dull ever since the transplant, but for some reason still unknown to me and my doctors, my senses of taste and smell have almost completely disappeared over the last several weeks. We originally thought the loss of taste and smell was a result of nasal congestion, but it’s persisted through four different allergy meds and Flonase and is the same whether I’m congested or not. What’s strange is that I can tell if something is spicy, tart, sweet, or salty, but I can’t taste it; the actual flavor is non-existent. Needless to say, as a lover of fine foods, this experience has been quite frustrating or me! :(
A few random things still offer a tiny bit of flavor to my defective taste buds, including chili, oranges, coffee, cherry frozen yogurt, tomato sauce, and...Loaded Chili & Cheese Ruffles. So a couple nights ago, after making some delicious enchiladas (how would I know, right?) and not being able to taste them, I was a little depressed. Zack decided to cheer me up by taking me to our local “Stop & Save” Liquor Store (I love these liquor store names...because of course we all know people go there for the savings) to stock up on food we knew I could somewhat taste, beginning with the infamous Loaded Chili & Cheese Ruffles. We scoured the aisles on the “Quest for the Holy Ruffles” and left with not only the Ruffles, but some Pizza Supreme Doritos and, our healthy choice for the evening, Garden Tomato & Basil Lays. I guess it’s bad when your “healthy” choice is a bag of potato chips.
We are actively trying to determine the cause of this loss of smell and taste, and I believe that it will improve (hopefully sooner rather than later!), but in the meantime, I’m trying to enjoy the texture of food and then use my brain to recall what it should taste like. So if my brownies taste a little off, I take no responsibility.
Now imagine plugging your nose every time you eat. That’s basically what my experience has been with food for the past month. My taste buds have been dull ever since the transplant, but for some reason still unknown to me and my doctors, my senses of taste and smell have almost completely disappeared over the last several weeks. We originally thought the loss of taste and smell was a result of nasal congestion, but it’s persisted through four different allergy meds and Flonase and is the same whether I’m congested or not. What’s strange is that I can tell if something is spicy, tart, sweet, or salty, but I can’t taste it; the actual flavor is non-existent. Needless to say, as a lover of fine foods, this experience has been quite frustrating or me! :(
A few random things still offer a tiny bit of flavor to my defective taste buds, including chili, oranges, coffee, cherry frozen yogurt, tomato sauce, and...Loaded Chili & Cheese Ruffles. So a couple nights ago, after making some delicious enchiladas (how would I know, right?) and not being able to taste them, I was a little depressed. Zack decided to cheer me up by taking me to our local “Stop & Save” Liquor Store (I love these liquor store names...because of course we all know people go there for the savings) to stock up on food we knew I could somewhat taste, beginning with the infamous Loaded Chili & Cheese Ruffles. We scoured the aisles on the “Quest for the Holy Ruffles” and left with not only the Ruffles, but some Pizza Supreme Doritos and, our healthy choice for the evening, Garden Tomato & Basil Lays. I guess it’s bad when your “healthy” choice is a bag of potato chips.
We are actively trying to determine the cause of this loss of smell and taste, and I believe that it will improve (hopefully sooner rather than later!), but in the meantime, I’m trying to enjoy the texture of food and then use my brain to recall what it should taste like. So if my brownies taste a little off, I take no responsibility.
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