Anosmia means I can't smell...

Anosmia. As disabilities go, it's not bad. We (speaking as a human) typically have five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. I didn't put the words in any particular order, but those missing the first three have bigger problems than those lacking the fourth and fifth. I feel for the blind, and deaf, and those who can't feel physical sensation. Those who can't taste food have problems, too. I can't imagine what that's like.

In all likelihood, my sense of smell went out the window with the first touch of wernicke's. I didn't notice it go. Shoot... I didn't really notice it was gone until 2005, but I'm sure it went away before that.

I was able to smell when I was younger. Some people are born without a sense of smell, but I'm not one.

There are dangers in not being able to smell. Not as many dangers are there are to those who can't see or hear, but there are dangers. I just have to be careful.

What are the dangers? Thanks for asking (or reading).

I once cleaned my coffee maker with ammonia instead of white vinegar. We used to keep the jugs of both chemicals under our kitchen sink. Not anymore. I couldn't smell the difference between vinegar and ammonia. Fortunately for me, I hate the taste of vinegar. When I clean the coffee pot, I rinse it five or six times. I didn't drink the ammonia, but my wife knew something bad had happened the second she walked in the door.

I make doubly sure to change the batteries in our smoke alarms. If there's a fire and I'm the only one home, I won't wake up with the smell of smoke. I get a little worried when I clean behind our gas stove. If that pipe goes, I won't smell the telltale odor of gas.

If food in the fridge hits the dubious line between fresh and puke-your-guts-out, I have to ask my wife (she smells great!) to tell me which side of the line it's on. I mean, sure, sometimes I can see when I should toss it. Gray ham is never as good as it sounds...

Sometimes I can smell. The sensation confuses me. It tends not to last long. Goes away in a few minutes. When the sense does come and I figure out what it is I'm smelling, I have noticed that most of the time (darn luck) I'm around something that doesn't smell good.

In my case, there isn't much hope the sense will come back on a permanent basis. Nerve damage is the cause. I'm okay with that. I'm a survivor of Wernicke-Korsakoff. Losing my sense of smell was and is a small price to pay.

I did a little research tonight to see if anosmia is effecting my sense of taste. Some say it does, and they're probably right. I can taste food. I don't get the aroma that makes some food taste better. I don't get hungry for bread when I pull it out of the oven, but I do like the way it tastes.

I'll never be a good judge of fine wines, I say with a laugh, and that's okay! As a survivor of Wernickes, I can't drink that stuff anyway. Grape juice (the closest I come to wine) tastes like grapes whether I can smell it or not.

It's not easy to write about Wernicke-Korsakoffs, but I feel like I have to do it.

I survived Wernickes, and although I have Korsakoffs, few know it unless I tell them. That makes me a rarity, unfortunately. I wish everyone recovered from that set of serious illnesses, I wish no one suffered from it, I wish no family member had to deal with a loved one who is lost to either illness. I wish more people knew about the disease, if the other wishes can't come true.
   I wish a lot of things. Wishing isn't enough. I wrote a little book called Green Goblin, and it's selling some copies. It's a good little book if I do say so myself, and I hope more people read it. Green Goblin is my account of the acute phase of the illness, the part that takes place in the hospital for the lucky ones. Undiagnosed and untreated, Wernickes can be fatal.
 Green Goblin is good as far as it goes. Few who have had Wernickes have ever, and I mean ever described what it was like. Most can't. And since I can, I felt I should. I felt I had to do it.
   I wrote that book a couple of years ago, and now I feel I have to take the next step. I have to face the disease again...this time from the comfort of my chair. This time from the discomfort of my chair. I'm sober, but have to look back on getting sober, if I have any hope of helping people get to and through what I had to go to and through.
   I intend to give it my best shot. I'm not sure when I'll be done with it, but look for an announcement here when I finish and publish it. I think the writing of it will go quickly. I think when I peel away the mental bandages and examine the wound, I'm going to want to rip away the gauze and look fast.

Odds against me? I'm fine with that, and here's why...

I got my proof copy of Sexton Sand (Sexton Chronicles IV) today. It wasn't the first copy sold, and I think it's cool that I know who bought the first copy because he told me when he bought it. Lulu gives me a way to make sure I get the first copy, but I don't play it that way. You see, I'm hopeful. I'm full of hope that one day, although the odds are against me, these self-published Sexton Chronicles books (genre: fantasy. BUY 'EM TODAY) will hit the big time.

   Odds are against that happening to self-published books. It's been done, so I know it's not impossible, but odds are against it for a variety of reasons. I won't enumerate those reasons because I really don't care what they are.

   This isn't the first time in my life the odds were against me, and it won't be the last.

   Odds were against me living much of a normal life when I had my first epileptic seizure when I was about six years old. Through no fault of my own, I beat the epilepsy.

   Odds were against me when I declared, at the age of 10, that I would be a 13-year-old Eagle Scout. I made it with days to spare.

   Odds were against me when I decided to go for a full-tuition scholarship to college when I had a 3.0 grade point average in high school and played no sports. I got one.

   Odds were against me meeting a sitting President of the United States in the White House. I did.

   Odds were against me in 2005 when, through a fault completely mine, I fell ill with Wernicke's Encephalopathy and Korsakoff's Disease. I beat it--with a lot of help from a lot of people and God.

   So when I look at the odds of going from self-published to big time, I know it's been done before.

And I intend to be another one. Have a great day. It's up to you.

I'm excited about a couple of things...

I'll mark this first one in my calendar because it makes me happy for reasons I don't fully understand: Someone, somewhere in the United Kingdom bought Green Goblin for their Kindle. The Sexton books have been up on Amazon UK for a couple of months with no sales, and I was beginning to wonder if any of my stuff would sell on Amazon there. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that Green Goblin was my first sale in the UK. They're waaaay ahead of the US in terms of recognizing and treating Wernicke-Korsakoff disease.

I'm also excited, for different reasons, about Smashwords.com. Smashwords publishes eBooks in all formats. I uploaded all three (to date) Sexton Chronicles books as well as Green Goblin, and Smashwords converted them to epub, kindle, Sony Reader, Palm Reader, PDF, RTF, and other formats I don't remember at the moment. You can buy/download books from there and read samples there. 

The other thing Smashwords did for me is made the Sexton books easy to find with a simple Google search. The books appear with all kinds of URLs that lead to free samples, and ultimately to the books. Very, very cool.

If you have an electronic reader, take some time to check out www.smashwords.com And it won't hurt my feelings any if you buy one, or two, or four of mine while you're there!