Taste loss is an insidious beastie. You see, the general sensation of
flavor is actually an amalgalm of different senses: taste, smell, and
texture (touch). And the devious nature of this problem is that even if
your sense of taste were to vanish, your subconscious mind can fill the
blank based on smell and texture alone. The result is, you may not even
notice that your sense of taste is gone unless you're really paying
attention to your food.
Over 5 years ago I
realized I lost my sense of taste. It was never entirely clear how. My
best guess is very hot oils (temperature-wise, not spicy) from a General
Tso's chicken recipe I was following burned out my taste buds because I
tasted the chicken almost directly from the skillet. For the life of me,
I can't remember how long it lasted or if I did anything to contribute to
my recovery. It did come back eventually, that much I know.
Well, it's happened again. Sometime within the past several weeks my
sense of tasted elusively slipped away once more, leaving me one sense
down. Have my other senses sharpened to super-human levels to compensate?
Sadly, no. My wife thinks that it may have been some overcooked teriyaki
meatballs at the new year's eve party we attended. I admit, I was a bit
tipsy and could very well have sampled some meatballs that were hotter
than would be prudent to eat. And my tongue does seem completely numb to
temperature (though not to touch). Locking down an exact date for my
taste loss is difficult for the reason I explain above: it's easy to
overlook if you're distracted by other things and the truth is that I
rarely ever eat and do nothing else. I'm either watching television,
playing a game, programming, reading, or some other activity. So it was
easy for me to overlook the evil leprechaun in my brain filling in taste
sensations by extrapolating from smell, texture, and memory.
Funny that my wife remembers my doctor recommending gargling with salt
water and yet I do not. Funny but not surprising, as my memory for
general things that happened in my life is quite poor. I do know that at
some point my sense of taste did recover, I just don't have a clue how
long it took. And again, that's thanks to the insidious nature of taste
loss: it's easy to overlook when it comes on and thus it's just as sneaky
when it departs. In the meantime, I'll eat all those vile-tasting
"healthy" foods that I generally avoid. There's always a silver lining, I
suppose.
