Couch 217: The Order of the Phoenix couch

I use it unless there is mold - moldy buttermilk means time to toss

The other morning, I woke up at 6 am to the smell of smoke. It's probably relevant that I sleep with my window open. It smelled like wood smoke. I was feeling a bit anxious but tried to reassure myself that if my house or yard were on fire, I would hear something. I looked outside but couldn't see any smoke. Yet the smell was very strong. At one point, I felt like I was having difficulty breathing. I googled to see if there were any wildfires nearby, but the closest one seemed like it was too far away for me to smell it. I checked Nextdoor, but nothing there either. About an hour later, the smell was gone.

I mentioned this to my therapist in session because the smell of smoke can be a trigger for me, and he suggested that maybe I was having a body memory or something, I can't remember what exactly he said, that caused me to smell this. I'm really confused by this. Is it possible to hallucinate smells? There was no other physical evidence of a fire. I can't imagine why someone would be burning wood at 6 am in the middle of summer. Has anyone experienced something like this?

2ex hallucinated smells. He never admitted this, but I’m pretty sure because normally he had a poor sense of smell and I and others around could never smell what he did.

They seemed to come at his moments of greatest emotional distress.

I have definitely smelled the cigarettes my deceased brother used to smoke, the fragrance my grandmother ysed to wear. I am sure there are others. I used to have strange eeg readings and a psychiatrist once put it down to temporal lobe epilepsy

NP, there's often burning at odd times somewhere in my neighborhood. I have to close windows and doors at times, and I know I'm not imagining it. I think it's a rabid fire pit or chimenea lover.

Mobius, I'm pretty sure there's a Rx drug to treat TD--did your Dr. mention if it were possible for you? You could also ask your primary care about magnesium, even if you don't have a deficiency. It's quite safe and does have a muscle relaxing effect, so maybe could help.

Thank you! Yes I might start magnesium anyway. My neurologist recommends it too; I was hesitant to take it because she said it could cause diarrhea and when I first started seeing her I was having that regularly...but now that isn't a problem so I'll give it a go.

My psychiatrist did mention that there are two new drugs to help with TD. He said they have their own side effects, which I guess is true of all drugs. We have an appointment scheduled in three weeks so we'll discuss more then.

He also mentioned putting me on a mood stabilizer to replace the antipsychotic, which I am really unsure about. We'll see how I'm doing on August 25th when I see him.

Try to get magnesium in the form of magnesium glycinate (rather than magnesium citrate or another kind). It's less likely to cause diarrhea. Hope it helps!

@@ had the "Warmly" stage. I seem to have reached whatever stage it is where my T and I are emailing articles to each other to read. A couple days ago, I sent him an excerpt from an advice column I read where the columnist suggested a sports psychologist for the parent of a ballet dancer with a career-ending injury, and he replied thanking me and suggesting how I could include a comment about the different kinds of sports psychologists. Then, this morning, he forwarded me something from NPR that he thought might be helpful to my friend, who I've talked about in there. There was also the special education webinar happening a few weeks ago that he emailed me about.

Not sure what's going on with this. I like it OK, but just a bit unusual. He did email me an article maybe a year ago, but it was something he'd mentioned in session, so that's a little different.

Feeling better this morning - no temp.

I have an appointment this afternoon with doctor's office anyway.

Husband is still being a turd.

NP, I'd imagine one could hallucinate smells. I feel like I may have done this before, noticing a smell that no one else does. Or it could be a body memory of sorts. Just a heads up that I've also heard that randomly smelling burnt toast could be a sign of a stroke, but no idea if that's accurate. It does suggest that neurons firing in a certain way (or whatever the terminology is!) could cause one to sense smells that aren't really there.

It's great getting a call from your car insurance company while you're in the middle of crying about something from therapy. Think I managed to pull that off OK, or else she thought I was just really emotional about my car...

I'm sorry, LT. That sucks. How are you doing now?

Thanks, Lost. A bit better. I feel like I've spent more time on the phone dealing with assorted financial issues in the past 4 weeks than I've spent on the phone in general in the past year or two.

I almost yelled at someone calling on behalf of a candidate I support because they didn't respond at first and I thought it was a spam call. Then they asked how I was doing and I almost burst into tears.

They didn't ask me for a donation this time.

More stupid academic stuff. My school like many others canceled fall break so students won’t travel and bring back the virus. But, we are not supposed to hold classes those days.

If they don’t have classes, won’t they travel anyway?

That is a puzzler. We are holding classes on labor day.

I hope you're feeling better now, LT. I hate trying to function and handle business while I'm all emotional about something else. It's so hard to focus.


I had a minor panic attack myself this morning when h called our homeowner's insurance company to make sure they had the new lienholder information (we just refi'd our house) and she wanted us to take a picture of the letter the new mortgage co sent them and text it to her cuz she didn't have it yet, and i couldn't find my cell phone so I was freaking out til i found it and sent the pic she needed. I have a dr appt coming up in the next week or so I am thinking about asking my doc to prescribe a prn or something. I don't want to go back on meds all the time because i don't like how they dull me out but i need to do something.

I'm off work today through Saturday (go back Sunday). Today I'm trying to relax but keep being all fidgety and cleaning things in the house. There's SO much to go through. I think we're moving again in a few months. So yeah that stress on top of everything else going on.

Did you find a new house you like better?

Yes... not sure it's going to work out but we shall see. I just don't like the timing of it if that makes sense. It feels wrong somehow with the pandemic going on and stuff.

I don't see new house and pandemic as being related to each other. You buying a new house is not going to have bearing on whether there is a pandemic or not in my opinion. Houses my area are selling well. I think there are precautions everyone can take around movers etc if that is the concern. But I don't in general believe someone does not get to feel happy or do something to make themselves happy or what ever because of the pandemic. What would be the point in that?

Hugs, Artie. Financial stuff is so stressful...It's one of the worst parts of being an adult, I think.

Wait, will it be an issue if you just refinanced your current house? Or did you end up not doing that?

No, we did. If we do move, we'd be keeping current house as a rental property. Which of course adds to the stress.

Have you checked out the peloton app yet? I think it (or something like it) might be useful. I just did a 20 min. 70s rock walk and a 10 minute arms weight training workout and it feels great. I like weight training but have to be careful of a bad wrist and a bad elbow - so I just use lighter weights and space out the days I do it and do short stints rather than an hour or something. Peloton has a lot of choices of time, type, etc. It even has yoga and meditation. I like it for weights because they mix stuff up more than I would do on my own. When my person was alive, we used to do weight stuff with a pbs show and my person was so weak she started off using 8 oz little cans of v8 juice and worked up to 2 lb weights. And this was way before cancer.
The reason I keep mentioning this is it might help reduce stress and they are upbeat and encouraging etc (not my thing but it really sounds right up your alley) - you can adjust anything to your level and they have many coaches to try until you find the ones you like.