Thursday 12 September 2013

Scents and Sensibility

The good news is, I can smell again.  The bad news is, I can smell again.  I don't think it's come back completely but at least there will be no surgery, at least for now.  In the event that my nose goes rogue again, I may have to get a man in. 

Mainly I can smell bad things, most notably the smell in my flat which has always been there.  Nothing at all shifts it, except losing one's sense of smell.  Since the return of olfactory function, I have noticed this smell in the subway leading into Bruxelles Centrale station.  It also comes at me in Carrefour down the road from here and from various drains and, tonight, it was in my doctor's waiting room.  It is a sort of garlicky slightly faecal smell, bordering on sulphurous.  It is as though hell is seething just below the surface of everything which, I suppose, may be true.  Now, it might just be in my nose but that is unlikely seeing as I had a discussion about it with the owners of the flat.

Hellish smells aside, things are gradually improving health wise.  No more asthma clinic for a year, which means I have done good breathing in the blowy thing.  It occurs to me that I see more of my various doctors than anyone else.  This must be remedied.  Anyway, at the doctor's today getting various drugs, I mentioned that it would seem I'm heading into the jaws of menopause.  (Look at me being all brave and talking to a male doctor about my down there.)  I am exactly the average age for this to happen although it still takes one a bit by surprise.  And one does so hate to be average.

He said we could do blood tests.  What right now?  Yes.  And get the results tomorrow night.  (I am more accustomed to the NHS where you get sent to a clinic and wait for hours and get the results ten days later.)  I said I hoped he was good at it because I have very deep veins.  He tied off my arm and tapped at the inner elbow for a while and nothing happened.  He got the butterfly thing out to try my hand.  Now I've had a phlebotomist give up before and write "Difficult bleeder" on my form so I wasn't expecting much.  Doctor T calmly and quickly took a vial of blood and it was completely painless.

Interestingly, I was reading on the toilet this evening about the pricking of witches to find their numb spot.  Perhaps Doctor T was trying to find out if I'm a witch. 

All posts recently seem to be about various faulty bits of my body.  I do apologise for this, and will attempt to have some sort of life soon.





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