Twenty years ago, I got a glimpse of how it feels to lack one of our vaunted five senses when I took a bonk on the head and lost my ability to smell. I grieved the loss — one that’s not uncommon after a brain injury or, as we’ve learned from grueling experience, a bout of Covid — and I searched mightily for advice on how to get it back. Months later, an improvised form of brain retraining (basically, sticking my nose into things and telling myself what I was supposed to be smelling) ultimately worked. When I smelled new-mown grass again for the first time, I cried.
Accustomed to having all my senses, I’d been desperate to recover one I had lost. So it seemed reasonable to me that anyone else deprived of one of the senses — especially the ones I considered most precious, sight and hearing — would do anything to get it back, too. Which is why it was a revelation to read, in “Coming to Our Senses,” about people who retrieved part or all of their vision or hearing late in life, and who not only didn’t like it, but who actually suffered and even died as a result.
