Shark Nose

I have a shark nose. By that I mean I can smell pretty much everything at a super human level. This is so very annoying. If something stinks, it's like it's been shoved right up my nose holes. Even if something smells good, it's often times too intense and distracting. I am constantly bombarded by smells that overwhelm my senses. As I'm already often overwhelmed because of my OCD and social anxiety this makes it even harder to regulate myself in a overloaded world.

The other day Andrea came home from a trip and I gave her a welcome home kiss and immediately recoiled. "Why do you smell like metal? It's like kissing a fork!" She was like "WHAT?" And then after a minute said "Hmm, now that you mention it, my mouth does taste metallic..." It took about 3 days for the smell to go away. We don't know if it's because she ate a lot of fish when she was in Monterey, or if it was the coffee at the conference, or something else. But for 3 days I had to hold my breath and stifle the urge to recoil whenever she kissed me. That night in bed I had to have her turn away from me (rather than spoon me) because the metal smell was overwhelming and I couldn't sleep.

I can't use too heavily scented shampoos or conditioners because then I can smell my hair all day and I can't concentrate.

I can't stand scented lotions that are overpowering. Andrea has a vanilla lotion that makes me cringe it's so fragrant. She used it one morning because she ran out of regular lotion and when I saw her 12 hours later it was the first thing I noticed (even though she'd washed her hands and used other lotion during the day). She was amazed that I could smell it from that morning. And then she went and scrubbed her hands and arms as much as she could to reduce the smell. I could still smell it, but it was more tolerable.

I can smell when Andrea is about to get sick (not like barfing, but like cold/flu/respiratory infection). She has a "sick breath" smell to her mouth that apparently only I can sniff out. The good news is that we can pump her full of vitamins and zinc and it often reduces the illness. In that way I'm kind of like a service dog sniffing out a seizure before it happens. But I'd gladly give that up for a normal sense of smell. There's mostly only downsides to it.

Just one more weird thing that makes my life more difficult than it needs to be!