Losing a sense

I started to notice it when I tasted my food as if through a fog; it was harder to experience, to see, the flavours in my mouth. I then found there was dullness, an absence of sensation, in my nose and I had to reach for the smells I could experience, whereas before smells reached out to me. It seems as if one of the doors through which I access the world is being closed to me; I'm losing my sense of smell. As Kant argues, the means by which we experience the world (e.g. our senses) narrows the totality of the world down to our world; my world has just become narrower still. I'm left with my memory of what things smell like, forever picking at the leftovers of a great banquet.

Of all the things my Parkinson's is doing to me and the strange, baffling, frustrating traffic jams I'm getting caught in, losing my sense of smell is the most unexpected.