Knock on the Head Leaves Woman with no Sense of Taste
Caroline Buchanan, an author and counsellor, has been left without two of her senses, taste and smell, after falling down the stairs in March.
Caroline was renting a cottage in Dorset when she fell; she stumbled on the stairs, lost her footing and banged her head on the banister on the way down. Caroline felt dizzy and drowsy when she got up but she returned to her usual daily life and took her dog Billy for a walk. In hindsight, Caroline said that she should have gone to hospital to be checked out, as she was suffering from concussion.
When a friend came to visit the next morning she found Caroline in a terrible state; she had been vomiting and had a severe headache; she rang an ambulance and Caroline was taken to hospital, where tests revealed that she had suffered an extradural haemorrhage, which causes bleeding between the skull and the brain. Caroline underwent urgent surgery to ease pressure on her brain; the operation probably saved her life, but she was left with no sense of taste due to damage to the nerve that controls smell. Around 95 percent of our sense of taste is dependent on smell, so damage to the nerve hindered both senses.
Caroline said that she had taken her senses for granted and did not realise how much she relied on them until they were gone; she said that she feels said that she can no longer smell her daughter when she hugs her and laments not being able to taste beautifully prepared food when they go out for meals, claiming that all she can taste is a “bland, metallic taste.”
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