She had been feeling nauseous a lot over a period of two or three weeks.
Someone she worked with had a stomach bug, and then another person in the office caught it, so she figured she’d probably caught it too.
Then one day, walking up the stairs to our second-floor apartment, she had to stop and balance herself on the handrail. She suddenly felt very dizzy.
We naively thought this was an odd symptom of stomach flu.
Sometimes, two and two can stare you directly in the face, and you still, for whatever reason, don’t put them together. Call it what you will, naiveté or denial, we had no idea that we’d already taken a seat on life’s greatest rollercoaster ride.
It wasn’t until she was at work a few days later when she noticed that she could smell absolutely everything. That was the lightbulb moment for her. She could smell perfumes and colognes from down the hallway. She could smell what coworkers several offices away were having for lunch. From inside, she could sme…