Being nasally challenged is nothing to be sniffed at

To be honest, I never gave much thought to noses, ne'er even my own, until my sense of smell departed.

On the evening of Sept. 26, 1997, while shopping at a neighborhood store, I blacked out and spent the next four days in a coma in a hospital's intensive care unit. After regaining consciousness, things stayed pretty foggy for a while, but at some point I realized that my food had no taste. It was a bit like having a bad cold, only without the cold. Eventually it dawned on me that my olfactory senses had ceased to register.

"Loss of the sense of smell not uncommonly follows a head injury," explains Gabriel Symonds, director of the Tokyo British Clinic in Ebisu. "This is due to tearing of the fine nerves from the lining of the nose as they pass through the thin bony plate between the nose and the brain. Complete loss or distortion of the sense of smell can result, and is likely to be permanent."