Recently, I’ve been smelling the smell of poo while sitting at my computer at home. It comes suddenly in an intense burst that is quite noticeable. And then disappears. The smell is that of poo, not flatulates, the solid stuff. But sometimes there will be a variant like stinky feet smell or body odor. It’s not a good smell like the smell of coconuts or apple pie or tatami mats. When it comes, I check my hands, armpits, feet, clothes, keyboard, keitai, under my desk etc in a effort to isolate the smell but there’s nothing. The doors and windows are closed so it can’t be coming from outside. It appears to be coming from directly in front of me, like from my keyboard or computer monitor.
This has been happening once or twice a day for the past 2 weeks and is driving me absolutely crazy. I’ve been trying to figure out this mystery but haven’t been able to come to any conclusions, however I do have some theories. Here they are:
- Someone hid some poo in my computer case. An ex-girlfriend of mine once hid a really strong airfreshener behind a bookshelf in my apartment. It smelled like citrus constantly and it took me a while before I discovered I was sabotaged. I think she was giving me a subtle hint that she didn’t like the smell of my place. Anyways, citrus is better than poo.
- There’s some kind of animal living and pooing in my office. Like a rat or beaver.
- There’s some kind of sewage leak that’s seeping into the walls of my house near where my computer is located.
- The smell is coming from some other-worldly source. You know how the devil is supposed to smell like fire and brimstone, like that except a poo demon, or something.
- My brain is short-circuiting and sending me sensations from past experiences. Perhaps they are my first smell experiences as a baby? If so, why couldn’t they be more pleasant smells like a new car smell or first kiss smell?
I have reason to believe that it could very well be number 5 since today at work I experienced another wave of poo smell while sitting in front of my PC at the office. Very strange this is. At any rate, I’m sorry for throwing around the “p” word so liberally in this post. Hope I didn’t ruin your lunch or dinner.
That’s gotta suck. Maybe it’s some unadvertised feature of your computer, that it can generate smells too, and that there’s a new type of poo-smelling spam or virus.
(Just another theory for your list.)
Couldn’t it be a problem with your nose?
You should try to ask other people near you at work whether they can smell the poo too… or maybe you shouldn’t.
Maybe you have phantosmia.
Patrick, I smelled poo again while on the train today. I looked around to see if anyone else sensed it but I think I was the only one. What gives?
Brad, What’s phantosmia?
It could be a nose problem really.
My mom can’t distinguish smells, except tell whether it’s a “bad” or “good” smell. So maybe your nose is suddenly associating all bad smells with poo.
Or, maybe a poo ghost is following you everywhere you go.
I sometimes smell random smells which my husband cannot detect. I think that “5″ is the candidate for me as well.
Our sense of smell is not well understood. The theory I was told was that there are receptors in our noses which receive the proper type of stimuli and send a signal to our brains. It’s sort of like square pegs going into the square slot and round ones into round slots signaling the brain to make connections. The “square” receptor being filled might mean “cookies” and the “round” one might mean “urine”.
My guess is that, when you receive a stimuli which fits into the same type of receptor as another type, your brain is told that it is “poo” because that’s the receptor that is messaging it, but it could be another smell entirely. This malfunction could be because your sense of smell has changed or been impeded in some fashion, or it simply could be neural confusion.
At any rate, I’m sure what you’re experiencing is not pleasant, but I’m also pretty sure it’s not a sign of any greater issues. It could be there’s something you’re allergic to which is gumming up the works or microscopic mold in your house.
This is probably not the explanation for your case, but for the longest time I’d have these transient moments of smelling a “bad odor” (not exactly “poo”, but kinda bad). I’d try to use mu hand to recycle my breath to my nose to see if I had bad breath - nothing. I’d sniff around the house, office, car, my clothes - nothing. It seems that I had an abscess in my gums that caused it. After the dentist found it I had it treated (for reasons other than bad breath - it was vital to the health of my teeth), the transient smell disappeared. Funny that I could not smell it on my own breath. I even asked my wife to smell my breath (poor thing - what a sacrifice in the name of love and marriage) and she could not smell anything bad,
Is something dead in your computer chassis? This also happened to somebody at work. A gecko got where it wasn’t supposed to be (they apparently like warm areas) and got smashed.
Something to do with this?
http://lowendmac.com/menagh/06/1019.html
hello roy
first of all congrats on ur new site! i enjoyed ur blog before the hiatus. but i like the old site layout better.
about ur poo smelling experiences, maybe you were having small seizures, people smell stuff before having seizures
I was going to suggest a dead plant, but since you smell it on the train too, I am lost. At my office, I smelled something like someone’s throw-up for a few days, only to find out that it was a small rotting potted plant on someone’s desk.
Maybe your clothes smell because of dampness? Sometimes, a person can’t smell oneself because you’re so used to it. Hmmm weird.
Welcome back. Check your chair.
There is no possibility that your dysosmia could be caused by a brain tumor. Could it? Anyway there is a lot of information here so I will let you read it without mentioning publicly such things as depression, schizophrenia, or what happens when an alcohol dependent person quits drinking.
Random thoughts: Something went amiss, to some degree, with the Intralasik operation. Would antibiotic eyedrops have been indicated? Dysosmia can be caused by infected nasal sinuses. Is there nasal flora as there is intestinal flora? Have you ever blown an eyelash out your nose? Antibiotics wreak havoc on intestinal flora. Probiotics such as acidophilus are known to create a healthy intestinal environment. There are such things as “neti pots” with which one can flush out nasal passages.
Then again, if it were psychological: “Olfactory hallucinations known as dysosmia are generally associated with psychological conditions;” what would a person think of himself if he has lived for more than a couple decades in an alien society which considers him less than human while he has, all along, strongly identified with the predominant alien society in which he lives?
I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I learned some new vocab. Thanks.
I still don’t know if you were extensively using antibiotic eyedrops. If so, there is a possibility that the balance of “good” vs. “bad” micro-organisms in your sinus cavities are out of whack because eye orbits and nasal passages are connected. You may have been essentially “nuking” the good guys. If there is an increase of the bad guys, well, they make armpits smell and poop stink. If the good guys usually keep the bad guys at bay then it wouldn’t take many bad guys within your nasal passages for you to become aware of their presence. An increased dose of antibiotics would just make things that much more out of whack. There are a variety of probiotics that one can introduce into the intestinal environment. I have no idea how one would go about introducing probiotics into a nasal environment or even if it would be a good or bad thing. Anyway, it seems possible that you could have a sinus infection. It also seems that it could be extremely dangerous because the olfactory sense areas connect directly with the brain.
I’m not a doctor and I am not giving advice. These are just random thoughts that occurred to me.
Hmmm..that is interesting. I was heavily using antibiotics and steriod eye drops while I was experiencing these smells. Now I’m off those eye drops and I don’t smell poo anymore. You could be onto something!
This post really blew my mind because that has been happening to me?? wtf??
Not my breath and no poo in the keyboard??
Trippy!!!!
Me too. Any progress on what is causing this? What must we all have in common or have come in contact with?
This has been happening to me as well. We have planes that fly over our property. I have thought they were dispensing different things at times because the smells/symptoms appear at the same time, like sweet smelling pesticide type and sometimes a smothering dust that affects my head, nerves, eyesight, pain. I also have had the smothering dust smell after hearing a thump under our house. Sometimes when I come home, the sweet pesticide smell is around the front deck area. When it first started in February 2005, I lost my hearing for several months and had flu-like symptoms for about 4 months. I had many tests run. I was told that I had allergies and panic attacks. I just try to cope as best as I can. This afternoon has been really bad. My head feels weird above my ears. I input my symptoms at http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/ (smell Symptoms, head symptoms, vision changes, nerve symptoms, & pain)and the first thing on the list was that came up was cadmium poisoning. When I can get another appointment, I’ll try to get checked for that. Other things I have smelled are manure, fish, poo. I’ve also started wheezing sometimes. It’s good to know I am not alone in this.