Dr. Ally/Allie Louks

Yeah.

So it was gone, like gone completely.

100% couldn't smell a thing for 18 months.

And then it very, very slowly, so incrementally that it was practically impossible to know that I was recovering.

Yeah, it has slowly, slowly come back.

But a lot of things smell different to how they used to.

I used to be really good at it.

I used to be able to smell something and know what was in there.

And now everything smells different.

It's like having a kind of hard reset.

You have to kind of work.

I suppose.

I mean, it's a this is maybe a terrible comparison, but it's kind of like learning to walk again.

You know, like everything is different.

You're having to build up your understanding from the ground up.

I mean, actually genuinely think that maybe the hardest part of my work, because I love what I do.

I really genuinely can say that I love what I do.

The hardest thing is returning to books that are really great examples of olfactory texts in that smell is very fundamental to them and it's operating in a way that is necessary for the functioning of the plot or for characterization or style or whatever.

But the books themselves are just absolutely hideous.

Just like poorly written?