Three years ago Eliz­a­beth Zierah caught a cold; a few weeks later she was back to nor­mal… except that she had lost her sense of smell. In Slate, she writes about the mis­eries of los­ing the sense of smell (and in the process, taste).

I lost nor­mal func­tion on the left side of my body from a stroke when I was 30, and although I’ve had a strong recov­ery, I still have lim­ited fine-motor con­trol in my left hand, I walk with a limp, and I can’t feel much on my affected side. Yet with­out hes­i­ta­tion I can say that los­ing my sense of smell has been more trau­matic than adapt­ing to the dis­abling effects of the stroke. As the scent­less and fla­vor­less days passed, I felt trapped inside my own head, a kind of bod­ily claus­tro­pho­bia, dis­as­so­ci­ated. It was as though I were watch­ing a movie of my own life. When we see actors in a love scene, we accept that we can’t smell the sweat; when they take a sip of wine, we don’t expect to taste the grapes. That’s how I felt, like an observer watch­ing the char­ac­ter of me.

via Mind Hacks