I first smelled it Saturday evening, after helping a friend clean a house. She's moving into this beautiful old farmhouse, but the previous tenents had cats that forgot where the litter box was. Or maybe they never had one. After tearing up carpets and scrubbing everything with bleach, we've realized that the smell is in the wood floor which will now have to be sealed with Kilz. (God bless Kilz.) When I came home I showered and laundered everything that I was wearing.
Oh, the smell.
When we went out that evening I smelled a faint ammonia/cat urine scent that I was sure was on me somewhere. I was mortified. People could smell me, and I smelled like pee.
But after yet another shower I could still smell it. And the smell got stronger. Did my hair smell? My fingernails? Me? Was something in the house so bad that it drew into my nose and permanently lodged there? And it wasn't localized to just the house. It followed me in the car, while I walked through the grocery store, while I sat through an IEP meeting, while I tried to sleep at night. At times it was so bad that my eyes would water. And always my nose burned with ammonia.
"You don't smell that?!" I'd ask Becky as she sat in the kitchen doing school. I mean, if my eyes were watering from the stench, she HAD to smell it. Except she didn't. Nobody smelled anything. Ever. So it was determined that nobody smelled anything except for me, and I didn't smell. I just smelled something.
The doctor recommended a Neti Pot. While that cleaned me out in an uber gross kind of way, it did nothing for the smell. Well, that's incorrect. It made the smell worse as there was nothing else in my nose to help mask the ammonia. And still, the smell goes on. A bit of Vicks helps mask the smell, and shockingly mixing my chemicals like that hasn't made my brain explode. I have, however, developed a headache from the non-stop ammonia sniffing. It's something that I don't recommend.
The ENT suggested an overactive olfactory nerve, and has me on steriods to calm it down. People, the sheer number of 'roids that I'm on will have me buff and growing hair on my boobs in 24 hours. I'd be happy with the buff part, and if hairy boobs is the price to pay so be it. I have a good razor. I'm just hoping that it works, because the smell. It's driving me crazy.
This is the weirdest thing that I've ever encountered. Please tell me that you've had medical weirdness at some point too, just to make me feel better.
9 comments:
I was half expecting you to say you'd found the source, remedied and it was easy. :o(
Is your friend experiencing the same? Maybe you need to pour some Kilz in your Neti Pot...
Siobhan - My friend is normal. Thank goodness. Maybe Kilz inside the nose will be my next step. Good plan.
In the first house we bought, my husband tore up the wall-to-wall carpet, whose pad was soaked with cat pee and worse. It had soaked through to the wood floors. We had the floors stripped and redone, but my husband never got over that experience, the smell was so noxious. In addition, the former tenants had kept the litter boxes inside the bathroom vanities - every single bathroom stunk of cat pee, even after we tore out the vanities, tore up the linoleum (and replaced it with tile), and repainted the bathroom walls. (We did all this before we moved in, it was so bad).
I was pregnant at the time. To me, the house still stunk of cat pee. After all that...it was awful. What helped was some Nature's Miracle we got at the pet store. But I could still smell it. I thought I would go crazy.
And my husband refuses to even consider ever getting a cat.
Is it odd that we both made a post about ammonia today? haha. I mentioned it in my Friday Fragments earlier.
A smell which just won't go away. I have experienced that. It was a fishy smell from high school science summer camp when I disected a catfish. I think I smelled that smell for a couple weeks. Not fun.
That sounds awful!! And of all the smells, cat urine! Why couldn't you be smelling roses or baking cookies? I have never heard of anything like that, sorry. Hope is goes away quick.
Just this morning, my cat peed on the wood floors in front of the front door. Again! Darn cat. He does it when he is upset with something, usually the state of the litter box (darn husband not cleaning it enough!). I'll have to look into this Kilz stuff...
During the year after my daughter was born, I would off and on sleep baby poop. Even though I was at work or somewhere else no where around babies or their poop. (I even wrote a post about it once.) I called it The Phantom Poop Smell, and apparently others (like my sister) have experienced similar. So you are not alone in your weird smelliness.
Love that pic!
For me it was like my nose was in an ashtray. I smelled cigarette smoke wherever I went, it was so strong I could taste it. Maddening, isn't it? Why can't it be something pleasant like oranges on a summer afternoon?
Love the pic.
Strange. I have not had that happen--thank goodness. Cat pee is one of the worse smells.
Good luck. Hope you don't grow chest hair!! ;)
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