I'm smelling things, no really, and it is not fun. Any suggestions/help?

[LosinIt]

Seeing a neurologist, they have already ruled out a brain tumor. That is one worry, temporal lobe tumors can cause olfactory hallucinations, otherwise known as phantosmia. Did a brain scan two years ago and that was negative. I was having the symptom then, but it subsided and is now back with a vengeance. They did an EEG, waiting on those results. May be epilepsy related. The doctor isn't hopeful that they will find a cause and therefore won't find a cure. It may be migraine related. I have a slight migraine right now and the smell is there too. It also happens on its own.

Of course I couldn't possibly smell roses or cinnamon rolls, this month it is rancid orange juice. I have smelled swamp water, rotten lip balm, some chemical type smell I couldn't identify ( which was really weird since I worked in a chem lab for 16 year and thought I had smelled it all. I guess I should consider myself lucky, some people smell rotting flesh of feces.

It is very disconcerting, makes it hard to concentrate. It's like a cloud of gas that you can't escape. This is making my life miserable and not doing a whole hell of a lot for my career. My train of thought is constantly derailing.

Anyone ever hear of this or have any suggestions. If I have to live like this for the rest of my life I will have to be placed in a rubber room or I may take a hostage.

[BurtWorm]

1. That stinks!

And I really mean it. I've only heard of people losing their sense of smell and getting it back. But I've never heard of people smelling what you smell. What a weird thing the nervous system is. All I can do is wish you well. And apologize for the header if it offended you.

[LosinIt]

3. No offense taken.

Some people have no smell (anosmia), some people have a distorted sense of smell, apples may smell like vomit (parosmia), or smell things in the absence of any smell at all (phantosmia). It's fascinating what you can learn when you are trying to self-diagnose.

[BurtWorm]

5. How are you doing that?

I use the Merck manual. But there are dangers to that, because I start imagining symptoms for conditions much worse than the one I went to find out about.

Did your condition come on suddenly? (Don't worry, I'm not going to try to diagnose you; I'm just curious.)

[LosinIt]

6. Google search, medline search

at my other jobs I had a lot more access to literature than I do now so I am somewhat limited to what I can get without paying for it. As I recall it did come on suddenly. I remember standing outside of my cubicle at my old job wondering where that swamp water smell was coming from. Then I smelled it in my car and in my house, so I thought it was coming from me. After thorough scrubbing and asking my kids if they could smell anything on my skin, I realized that I was just making it up in my head and it really wasn't there.

[BurtWorm]

9. Weird!

Makes you think about what smell really is. Is it really out there in the world, or is there something physical out there that flips switches in the brain that just make us think smell is "out there?" It seems that your brain is inventing smells by turning on those switches without being stimulated to physically. The unidentifiable chemical smell is an example of what I'm talking about. It's as though the smell is waiting in the brain to be stimulated in a specific way, regardless of whether there's a chemical or other object out there that is able to stimulate it. Like the rancid lip balm. Have you ever actually smelled lip balm that is rancid? How do you know to classify the smell as lip balm? Or rancid, for that matter?

As I say, weird!

[LosinIt]

12. Rancid lip balm was the best description I could come up with

It is a medicated smell that was slightly rotten. One thing that really blows my mind is if the smell is truly just in my head, why is is worse if I take a deep breath in through my nose? Perhaps it is just the olfactory nerve being stimulated, but I don't know.

[BurtWorm]

14. Some pregnant women's olfactory senses go haywire.

Mazel tov! ;)

It might be something to talk to your doctor about. I wonder if hormones could alleviate the symptoms. (DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical professional. Please seek the advice of a qualified physician.)

[LosinIt]

18. OK, I am approaching that magical time - mentalpause

so it could be hormonal also. No pregnancy here, my husband and I are both fixed. We would have two lawsuits on our hands.

[Bossy Monkey]

2. Just the very, very obvious: have you tried if perfume/essential oils will

help? Sorry it's such an obtuse suggestion, but it's all I've got except for infinite sympathy.

[LosinIt]

4. I keep a bottle of peppermint essential oil with me all of the time.

It can help momentarily, but doesn't take the phenomenon away. Thanks for the suggestion. People at work think I am strange when I bring it to meetings.

[Bossy Monkey]

11. When I was trying to reach my mom when the Alzheimer's had almost

taken her completely away, I asked the florist what the most aromatic scented flower was. They recommended freesia. You might want to see if that's any improvement at all over peppermint.

[LosinIt]

13. thanks, I'm willing to try anything

there's a discussion group on Yahoo about this and someone on there said there's a product that is pressurized sea water. Don't know why that would work, but will probably try that also.

[Wonk]

7. I don't know if this has any relation to your case, but it might have

something to do with Synesthesia? Some people hear colors, taste music, etc.
http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/synesthesia.html
:shrug:

on edit: Your headache pain could possibly also be being interpreted as smell. Just a thought.

[KT2000]

8. Yes I have heard of this

also people getting their senses mixed up with each other, hearing colors, etc.

I would suggest that you see doctors who treat chemical injury - by that I mean that chemicals are capable of breaching the blood-brain barrier by traveling up the olfactory nerve - into the brain. When this happens all kinds of symptoms develop, depending on where the brain has been affected.
When you hear about people with chemical sensitivity, Gulf War Syndrome, sick building syndrome, agent orange syndrome - soon to be Ground Zero syndrome, these are people with this problem.

Are you near Los Angeles? Dr. Gunnar Heuser would be a good person to see. He has a web site at: http://www.toxgun.com

Do not become discouraged - there is hope - you just need to get to doctors who actually treat this.

[LosinIt]

10. Thanks,KT2000 and Wonk, I will check this out

I live between Rochester and Syracuse NY. I found out there is a doctor at Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse who is doing some research into this. I could be his favorite new guinea pig. Will contact him also.

[tridim]

15. Is it common to smell "natural gas" when you hit your head?

I've experienced this a few times when I've smacked my head snowboarding. The brain is amazingly whimsical sometimes.

I used to think the brain was the most fascinating organ in the human body, then I realized what was telling me that. -Emo

On Edit: What you're experiencing doesn't seema all that strange now that I think about it. I dream vivid smells all the time, although they're usually pleasant.

[maggrwaggr]

16. You're living in a haunted house

I'm not joking.

[LosinIt]

19. So why do I smell the smells at work and in my car

are they haunted also? And I have moved into a different house from when they first started two years ago.

[DrBlix]

17. Having worked in a chemical lab for 16 years could have cause damage

To your olfactory nerve, either of the pair of nerves that are the first cranial nerves and that arise in the olfactory neurosensory cells of the nasal mucous membrane and pass to the anterior part of the cerebrum. This IMO is the first place to investigate.

[LosinIt]

21. It has been over 11 years since I worked in the lab

but I was exposed to some pretty funky stuff. I remember once when I first started I opened a solvent cabinet and a bottle of pyridine fell on the floor and broke. My boss made me clean it up. I was just a kid and didn't know enough to refuse. Luckily it was near the end of the week and having used the pyridine everyday (used as a coloring agent in cyanide distillation) I couldn't smell it as strongly). We also used some kind of sulfur compound that you could smell even though it was done in the hood. And we did an extraction of paper to check for the amount of silicone (for a copier application) that used MEK/butanol mix. Although that work was done in the hood, the testing was done with an AA with just an elephant snout above it so you would catch a little buzz if you did too many at a time. That's why I left, just too much exposure, even though it was theoretically safe.

But thanks for the input, I will mention it to my neurologist.

[nomaco-10]

20. Sometimes I think I smell

fried chicken and over ripe bananas.

[LosinIt]

22. That I could deal with

unless you also had an upset stomach at the same time, the fried chicken could get a little nauseating.