I have an anouncement to make......

This is very exciting and I have been waiting to share this until I felt the time was right to tell everyone.......that......I.......

CAN SMELL! (sorry no baby news I gotcha though huh?) The picture is for the nose!

Seriously though this is big news in my life. As many who check this blog already know I have SERIOUS sinus problems and always have. Moving here to Oregon has only intensified it even more. I finally took myself to the doctor, a miracle in and of itself, and got my nose checked out. So my doctor put me on an antibiotic and then I was to start a steroid for a month to decrease the swelling of all the polyps in my nose. Now when I say "all the polyps" I mean that I have multiple polyps all over in my nose. He said I had so many that they were about coming out of my nose! Whatever that means? I couldn't see any. He couldn't even get a picture of my sinuses to see what was going on because I had so many polyps blocking everything.

So I have been on the steroid for a couple of weeks and am thrilled to report that I can smell!! Can you believe it?! Me? I can smell! The one who hasn't been able to smell anything for...EVER!

Now, there has been an up side and a down side to this. Of course I love being able to smell things and I would always choose that over not being able to smell. But there are benefits that people that can usually smell don't think about all the time. Do you realize that when you can't smell anything it is not only good smells that you can't smell? You also don't have to smell bad smells and let me tell you that since I got my sniffer back there are more bad smells out there than good ones! I sort of appreciated in a way that I didn't have to smell my daughters poopie diaper, or the garbage that needed taking out or the left over dishes in the sink from the night before.

Foods are tasting different to me and I am finding out that things I thought tasted good don't really taste very good to me now. And there are other foods that are amazingly tasty that I wasn't fully appreciating before.

I can honestly say that it has become a life changing experience. To go without a sense for YEARS, even though it is probably the least of all the senses you really need. But to then get it back and realize all the things that you forgot you were missing out on, is crazy! I am sure that it is a little bit of the steroid talking but I feel great. I have so much energy and am happy. I can't remember the last time I felt this good consistently for more than a day or two.

People don't realize how exhausting it was just to breathe. You would think that breathing is the thing that your body does involuntarily and you don't even think about it. I thought about it every day. Between asthma at 25 and a completely blocked nose year and years it was ALWAYS hard for me to breathe, ALWAYS.

I know it is ridiculous that it has taken me so long to start figuring this out but in my defense I did try (a little) a long time ago and nothing seemed to work so I sort of gave up. I thought that I just had to resign myself to crappy quality of life. There were times that I seriously would have just liked to stop breathing and cut off my nose I was so miserable.

I am nervous about coming off of the steroid because I am terrified that I won't be able to breathe or smell anymore. I will go back in and get some pictures taken of my sinuses to see if I need some surgery to figure things out in there and I hope hope hope that I can retain this level of sniferocity. I have a suspicion though that I am going to need some anatomical rearranging of my sinus cavities or something, if that is even possible.

Anyway, just wanted to pass on the good news! Next time you come to my house watch out because I will probably be sniffing you to see if you smell good or bad!