Anyone who is on this site knows that taste and smell are inextricably linked. You really can’t have one without the other. The aroma of freshly ground coffee is almost as good as taking that first sip. So imagine living without taste and smell for the better part of a year. I did. Through progressively severe sinus infections, the disease in my sinus cavities built up so much that I gradually lost my sense of smell, followed by taste. I mean, how can you eat succulent roast salmon, crisp green beans, savor a truly good red wine and not smell the individual fragrances? You can’t taste them either at that point. Eating and breathing became impossible. Sometimes, with my then husband, I had to eat standing up because it was the only way I could actually eat and breathe between mouthfuls. Meals were not something I looked forward to. Awful.

Finally surgery was prescribed. It was a success. And even with splints up my nose, I had a deviated septum on top of everything else, I could actually breathe and smell! I figured I could probably taste too. I came home. I was like the dying man in reverse. My first real meal in a year. So what did I ask my husband to make for my first meal which happened to be breakfast? Scrambled eggs in olive oil, bacon; thin cut, crisp, crisp, crisp and white toast, no seven-grain-break-your-teeth-on-it bread, with real butter, salted and creamy. And coffee, freshly ground, of course. I drank it black. And then, I sat in the kitchen and just inhaled while it was all being prepared. Heaven on earth.