So I think it was Friday when I first noticed the smell. It might have been Saturday, it might have been Thursday. Initially, it was like, WTF smells funny? And I was walking around sniffing. Smelling my clothes, smelling my hair, smelling the blanket on the couch. Then I started thinking it was one of the dogs that smelled bad…because of course they do, they’re dogs. But no, this smell was not the dogs. And it wasn’t the Hub. I thought it might be an old bottle of shampoo I’d been using because honestly, I was smelling it everywhere I went.

I have a very sensitive nose. I think I’ve mentioned that before, either here or in comments elsewhere. I smell every-damn-thing. And there are some smells that just drive me crazy. This was one of those smells. I’ve spent hours trying to define it…it’s like smelling some hot, stale air that is being blown on you constantly. I briefly thought it was the fans on my laptop, but then I realized I was smelling it away from the laptop and even away from the house.

I changed my shampoo, I changed my clothes, I cleaned my hairbrush, I stopped taking the b12 pills that I’d started a few weeks ago…but I just kept smelling it. Sometimes it would go away, then it would randomly come back again. Then I realized that I had a weird taste in my mouth, too. When I wasn’t so intent on the smell, then the taste would bother me. So, like I should never do, I went to Google. I had trouble figuring out what to type in, but I tried a couple of different things and ended up with stuff like: medication side effects, tonsil stones (WTF), tonsillitis, sinusitis. I was fairly convinced that this was tonsil stones, mostly because I had no symptoms of tonsillitis and almost none for sinusitis. I’ve never had tonsil stones before and I couldn’t see any evidence of them, but seeing inside my own mouth is kind of difficult for me. So in effect, no matter what the diagnosis is, the SMELL was coming from me. BLECH. Hub swears he doesn’t smell anything (which the doctor later confirmed on her own behalf), but I SMELL IT.

As I’d mentioned, Hub’s insurance didn’t kick in until May 1st, so Monday morning I asked Hub to contact his HR department to get membership information so I could call my doctor’s office for an appointment. Unfortunately, she didn’t get back to us until late Monday night…and then I had a massage therapy appointment Tuesday morning that started before my doctor’s office opens (Tuesdays are late days for the dr’s office). After my massage therapy, I called the doctor’s office and got an appointment for the following day, which is today.

The doctor pronounced this as a sinus infection. She said my tonsils look like a sinus infection and the “smell” and “taste” symptoms are also signs of sinus infection. I have no pressure or pain, no green gooey or globby snot, just constant post-nasal drip (which I have from allergies) and the smell and taste issue. I’m walking around with this horrible smell in my nose and this yucky taste in my mouth…and now I get anti-biotics.

I HATE PILLS.

Ten days of 2 pills a day–one in a.m. and one in p.m.–which means I get to have pill anxiety twice a day for ten days. Yay. The doctor prescribed bactrim, which I took last year after my cyst issue, and apparently once before that I think for my post-surgery infection. I found this from last year’s cyst blog post:

Upon getting my ABs, I come home and go look up my blog post from when I had to take these particular ABs, and I apparently have nausea, bad taste in my mouth, and dry mouth (editing to add, and dry/itchy eyes near to the end of the course of ABs) to look forward to for ten days at least. Two pills a day over ten days.

I took my first pill about 90 minutes ago. About twenty minutes in, I had an anxiety “flash”…which kind of means I had that ripple of anxiety wash over me and I felt like something wasn’t right. But Hub was with me, and I told him, and I went on trying to distract myself for the hour post-pill-taking. My mouth still feels weird, but I suspect that’s the yucky taste in my mouth bothering me. I’m feeling pretty relieved because Hub says he’ll be working from home both tomorrow and Friday, and then he’s home for the weekend as well, so I won’t have to take any of the pills on my own for a few days. Hopefully at that point I’ll be okay to take them on my own.

And hopefully this smell will go away FAST. It’s really been driving me pretty cray-cray.