A Little Dab of Scent Memory – Dec 5, 2012

I had a conversation with some of the folks that I work with yesterday.  During the course of this conversation one of my employees mentioned that he had a runny nose earlier and had used peppermint oil dabbed under his nose to clear out his sinuses.  While this worked, he also made the mistake of sniffing some up his nostril which immediately caused an uncomfortable burning sensation.  As it turns out, you can also dab a little peppermint oil onto the roof of your mouth for the same effect.  Of course, this results in the concentrated essence of peppermint boring a hole through your soft palate and directly into your brain.  Next thing you know you’re running around the office, clutching your skull and screaming “My medulla oblongata is on fire!”

But what it did get me thinking about is how it is always said that the sense of smell is one of the major triggers for memory.  I wonder if this is true for everyone or just certain people, or perhaps the in order for the memory trigger to occur, the scent must be attached to a particularly powerful or vivid memory.  Maybe the smell of cotton candy and popcorn brings back the memory of your sixth grade crush that you finally built up the courage to kiss at the county fair.  The smell of baking cookies allows you to recall happy, peaceful times spent in your grandmother’s kitchen.  The smell of wet asphalt and exhaust reminds you of the weird guy in the trench coat and the windowless white van that always wanted to give you a puppy.

Of course, scientists will tell you that most new scents are experienced while we are children, which explains why most scent-associated memories are from childhood.  I am certain I smelled a ton of things when I was a kid, but those scents now do not act as particularly strong memory triggers for me, at least not memories where I am flooded by imagery of my past.  More often than not certain scents will invoke an emotional response or invoke a certain mood.  For instance, the smell of roasting green chilies will always bring my back to growing up in New Mexico.

Interestingly enough, the human sense of smell is not particularly effective in differentiating scents if we cannot see the object making the smell.

Is that a dead possum or a nice aged Brie?

Let’s face it, we’re a long way away from having the police hook us up to leashes and having us track an escaped convict through the woods.

Of course, the sense of smell has been harnessed by marketers and advertisers to draw us in.  Malls smell like fresh baked cookies, realtors will have cookies of pies sitting on the counter of the house they want to sell, all to make you feel more at home and comfortable.  Be honest with yourself.  You’re way more likely to buy a house if it smells like a fresh-from-the-oven apple pie than one that smells like dead-hooker-rotting-under-the-sleeper-sofa.  There’s a reason that scent never took off at the perfume counter at Macy’s.

My one challenge with scent and memory being inexorably linked (and they are.  I don’t argue with scientists since the Great Nerd Uprising of ‘83, also known as Nerdageddon.) is how does my mind determine which memory should be linked to a particular scent.  Does there come a point where I have smelled a certain odor so many times in so many different context’s that my brains just stops linking memories to it?

Of course, we all have our favorite smells, things that will always hold a special place in our nasal passage.

1.  Frying Bacon – Always reminds me of Sunday breakfast as a kid, after church, when mom would fry up bacon and eggs for the family, usually before we’d take a trip up to the mountains to hike or pick  raspberries.

2.  Fresh Ground Coffee – No particular memory here.  Just love the smell of fresh ground coffee.

3.  The smell of the desert after a rain storm – Wet sage, damp earth.  It just smells clean and fresh and wild.

4.  Anything baking – Bread, cake, cookies.  Baked goods baking automatically smell delicious.

5.  Roasting green chilies – A reminder of life growing up in New Mexico.

There are other smells, of course, that are delightful but do not harbor a particularly strong emotional response for me, at least on a conscious level.  Perhaps when I smell the cinnamon-imbued pine cones at the local grocery, I love the smell so much because on a subconscious level it reminds me of something, of a happier time, perhaps, when life was full of less stress, less responsibility, and more time to play and be free.

A time when pine cones were made out of cinnamon.

Henry’s Miracle – December 4 2012

Today, I would like to share a special story with you.  It is a story about a young boy, his family, and their desire for the boy to hear.

This is Henry’s story.

Henry was born in September, 2007, to Liza and Jason.  

He was a normal, healthy child for the first six months of his life.  At six months of age Henry contracted meningitis.  His condition went undiagnosed for several hours in the hospital.

Henry was in a coma for several days.  Liza and Jason prayed.  A prayer network of over 100,000 people was setup, praying for Henry’s recovery.

The miracle occurred.  Henry woke up.

Henry recovered.  He learned to sit up.  His muscles toned and he began to grow.  But the damage had been done.  Henry’s cochlea, the tiny, seashell shaped bones in the ear that transmit sound to the auditory nerve, had been damaged by the meningitis.

Henry could not hear.

For the next 4.5 years, Henry’s family worked diligently to find ways to communicate with Henry and give him the ability to communicate with them.  Liza stumbled across a system called Cued Speech.  Different from American Sign Language, Cued Speech uses hand shapes and positions along with spoken language to visually represent the various phonetic sounds from speech.  Through hard work and patience Henry and his family were finally able to communicate.

Henry was still unable to hear or speak.  Custom hearing aides offered no relief.  Special education was limited in the success it had with Henry.  He learned to communicate more, to recognize words, but there was so much more he wanted to say.  There is so much still locked away inside of him.

In July of 2012, Liza and Jason, after much deliberation, decided to have Henry implanted with Cochlear implants.  The family set out late at night for Baltimore and John’s Hopkins Hospital.

The surgery took approximately four hours.  Henry received bilateral implants and began the road to recovery.

Today Henry is fully recovered.  There is a small scar behind each ear, but he is a happy, active child.  He laughs.  He plays.  He loves his family with a wild fierceness.  His eyes are bright and he loves to explore his world.  He loves to draw with sidewalk chalk and ride his bike.

Despite all of this, Henry cannot still hear or speak.  His implants will be activated on September 14, 2012.  From that point forward, Henry will need therapy and specialized education to learn to hear, interpret language, and speak his first words.

Liza has found a school in Urbana, IL.  The staff there have met Henry and are willing and eager to take Henry under their wing and teach Henry, train him to understand language through his implants, hear his parents tell him they love him, and speak his first words to his family.   To make sure this happens, to give Henry every chance, Liza will be moving with Henry down to Urbana and live there with him during the week.  Her husband and daughters will remain in Evanston, holding down the fort and seeing her and Henry on the weekends.  This is the level of dedication the family has to Henry.

The only thing standing in the way is money.  That is where you can come in.

We have setup a donation site to raise funds to get Henry the education and therapy he needs.  Please follow the link below and consider donating.  The smallest amount can help Henry learn and experience life to its fullest extent.  You can help a young boy hear and speak.

You can be a part of Henry’s Miracle.

Please click the link below to donate.

https://www.wepay.com/donations/henrys-miracle

We understand that times are difficult and not everyone can afford a donation.  Please pass this message along to your friends and family and encourage them to do the same.  Thank you so much for your kindness and support.

You can follow Henry’s progress on his Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Henrys-Miracle/134179793323009