What the heck is it? This is totally wierd but I don't know if it is MTX or something else related. I have always had the nose of a bloodhound. If there was ANYTHING to be smelt in the house, I would smell it. If something was off in the fridge, or towels were smelly or the compost was composting in the container instead of outside...I was the one to smell it before anyone else in the house. Over the last 6 months my sense of smell has gone completely haywire. I don't smell things in the kitchen that my hubby can or my daughter can. I strangely CAN smell things that no one else can. But they are strange things that don't seem to exist like pungent smoky smells such as cigarettes or such odours that are not in the house. I will just catch a whiff of something and ask the others if they smell such and such and they look at me like I'm crazy. Its always some sort of smoky smell that just comes for a few minutes then goes again for a while then happens again. It seems to be strong enough to give me a bit of a headache and make my eyes burn, but doesn't really exist. I've checked for open windows, had the others sniff outdoors to see if someone nearby is smoking a pipe or cigar or something and the smell is just wafting by, but they smell nothing.
Has anyone had anything strange go on with their sense of smell due to meds? It is starting to drive me crazy. Has anybody experienced anything like this?
Pammy, this probably isn't your situation, but just to be sure...have you had any "staring spells" or seizure-like behavior that your family has observed? Temporal lobe epilepsy can give you "smell hallucinations", especially right before a seizure, which tend to be the staring-off-in-space kind, rather than the tremor kind. My ex-boyfriend had it and it took a very long time to get diagnosed.
Assuming you can rule that out, then I'm not sure. My sense of smell has always been more heightened than other people's and the meds have not seemed to affect it, but I've switched from mtx to Arava.
This link seems to imply that mtx can affect smell and taste (see #8):
http://www.rd.com/content/sharpen-your-sense-of-smell-and-ta ste/
And this article lists mtx in a table of drugs that can affect smell and taste:
http://www.aafp.org/afp/20000115/427.html
So it looks like the mtx can be doing that. I would talk with your RD and see if it makes sense for you to switch to Arava or something else.
That's really weird Pammy, during my first couple of weeks on mtx I had a strong taste/smell of what I could only describe as 'being stuck behind a bin lorry on a hot day'