Friday, November 24, 2017

The Great Wall of China
22. That Which We Call a Rose

The nurses fed me every day in the hospital. Sometimes more than once. None of it was any good. I don't remember a registered nurse ever delivering food in an American hospital, but in Beijing, the nurses always brought me my food. I never expected great food from a hospital, but I was truly surprised when I realized why the food was so bland.

Most of the meals were rice and vegetables, in different combinations and permutations. Sometimes the 菜心 was steamed. Sometimes the 白菜 was boiled. The rice was always the standard nuomi, white, sitting in a rice cooker all day, sticky rice. Every meal was served in small plastic bowls with plastic chopsticks and/or plastic spoons. All of the plastic reminded me of cheap shopping mall food, but it was obviously the more appropriate choice in a hospital setting.

When I was given pumpkin soup one day, I opened the bowl in anticipation. Chinese pumpkins taste nothing like American pumpkins, but pumpkin soup is a great treat when you are sick of cabbage and rice. I was extremely disappointed to find that the soup had no aroma and was as bland as everything else.

For dinner that same night, they gave me dumplings and the usual rice and vegetables. Dumplings cannot be bland. That would be like sweet lemon. A decent dumpling should have scallions, shallots or garlic, unless made for Buddhists. When I opened the plastic bowl, I was ready for a big whiff of sweet and sour, soy or sesame. Instead, I got a breath of air. Somehow, the hospital managed to suck all the flavor out of a dumpling. It was almost impressive.

Looking back, it amazes me that it took so long to realize that I had no sense of smell. When you are blind or deaf, you probably notice that right away. When it eventually registered that I could not smell anything, I tried to smell everything. When I told Nurse Xihua that I could not smell anything, she calmly took the tiger balm out of her pocket and opened it under my nose. That was a much better test than anything Dr Chen did later. If you can't smell tiger balm, something is wrong.

Dr Chen explained that since the hematoma was in the regions of the brain that control personality, movement, cognitive functions and sensory information, losing my sense of smell was a known side effect. Anosmia, they call it. Dysfunction of the olfactory system is not particularly uncommon after a sudden acceleration head trauma. He was not concerned about my vision, which is controlled by the occipital lobe. He meant to reassure me, but after hearing that I damaged the part of my brain that deals with personality, movement, and cognitive functions, I was far less worried that I could not smell anything.

None of the hospital food tasted like much of anything because the senses of smell and taste are so closely connected. Losing your sense of smell does not kill your sense of taste, but it takes the flavor out of everything. Taste without smell is like trying to see in the dark. You still have your sense of sight, but there are serious limitations without light.

Dr Chen could not tell me whether it was temporary or permanent. As with most things related to the brain, no one really knows. It could gradually come back over a period of time, come and go in waves or I could wake up one day with a fully functional nose. Any of the above could happen tomorrow, next month, next year or never. As with everything else, I was told to wait and see.


The Great Wall of China part 1

2 comments:

  1. So many questions. You can't smell anything? Did it ever come back? You said you have a sense of taste but can't taste anything? Why can't budhists eat dumplings?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Buddhists can eat dumplings. They're not supposed to eat garlic and onions.

    I still don't have a sense of smell. It could come back at any time. Technically, I have a sense of taste, but everything tastes like cardboard.

    ReplyDelete

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