Imagine Your Life Without a Sense of Smell...
LINDEN FORREST doesn’t remember much about the night that changed his life. It was 10 years ago and the then 21-year-old chef from Launceston was at farewell drinks for a mate who was moving interstate. After being confronted by a man who’d had a dispute with Forrest’s brother, both were ejected from the club they were drinking at. Forrest was walking away when the man grabbed him from behind and rammed him head first into a brick wall. Forrest’s brain was deprived of oxygen for five-and-a-half minutes and he suffered multiple haemorrhages. He woke up in hospital in neck and back braces.
Forrest had so much to deal with both physically and mentally in those first few weeks after the attack that it took a while before he realised something fundamental, elemental even, had changed. His memory is hazy but he believes his housemate might have been doing some cooking when he finally realised exactly what he’d lost. He waited for the aromas to hit him. Nothing. Bewildered, he tried lighting incense sticks. Still nothing. “It was just a process of elimination,” says Forrest, now 30, looking back. “If you lost your hand you’d be like, ‘Ah, my hand’s not there anymore’. But with your smell, because you can’t see it, it’s a lot harder to figure out.”
But while the realisation might have been gradual, the fallout would be devastating. Within a year he came close to taking his own life. A stranger “talked him off a bridge” as he stood over a local gorge, contemplating a 50m drop down onto silt and rocks. One night he nearly died when his electric blanket caught fire. He couldn’t smell the smoke. Another time he trod in dog shit and then trampled all over his carpet. The
