Sensory Hallucination

When you're the only one who sees/smells/tastes/hears something that others don't, it can lead to all sorts of paranoia.

I mentioned recently that we were having trouble with an odor in the shower. This has been going on for a good while - months, actually.

My husband never smelled it. He has yet to smell it.

I smell it every time I shower. That's the only time. About 3 minutes into a shower, when the water is hot, there's an awful odor from somewhere, and either I get used to it or it goes away, I am not sure which. I think it goes away.

The odor is bad. Like want to vomit bad. It just doesn't last long, fortunately, and I don't come out of the shower smelling like that.

We began trying to figure out what the problem was. My husband, always the one to go to the absolute worst solution, immediately said we would have to tear the shower out because obviously there must be a leak somewhere, and mold.

"And you are sick and have been and it's probably this mold," he declared.

I was not moving that fast to create chaos in the household, though. I suggested we try cleaning. Lots of bleach around the drain. We bought extra-long brush things that would go down into the pipes and used them.

The smell came and went with every shower, regardless of how bleached the bathroom actually smelled. Something has to smell strongly to overcome the power of a bleached bathroom. Really.

We found a plug and filled the bottom of the shower with bleach water, and I sat for an hour and watched it, waiting to see if the level went down, or if one of those little whirlpools appeared somewhere to indicate a leak.

Nothing happened. No whirlpool. No water level dropping. There isn't a leak in that shower.

We also cleaned the shower head and all parts of the shower, of course.

The stench continued.

I started to wonder if I was having some kind of weird nasal hallucination brought on by the act of showering. When you're the only one who smells it, it sets you back, you know? Was I having some kind of bacterial reaction from my body to the water? Was it my armpits? What?

But my husband said he believes I smell something. He pointed out that I had told him for a very long time that there was mold in the living room. It smelled so strong to me that I stayed away from that part of the house. He smelled nothing and we couldn't find any signs of mold. We found the mold when we replaced the windows. There was a leak around a window frame and it had molded there, in the wall. Once that was removed and fixed, the odor was gone. (He also told someone at Lowes when he went to get a part that I can smell an ant fart from 1000 yards, which is an overexaggeration. I hope.)

I started to wonder if the odor in the shower might not actually be in the water. I looked up smelly water and it turns out that hot water heaters can create an odor in water. They called it a rotten egg smell, and while what I am sniffing smells more to me like an old sewer drain that's gone dry, I suppose it could be a type of rotten egg smell. I'm not sure I've ever smelled a rotten egg, although since I grew up on a farm you would think that I would have.

There is something in a water heater called an anode, which is used to keep the tanks from being eaten away by the water. It is a long, metal rod typically made of aluminum, magnesium, or zinc, and is inserted into the top of the water heater tank. The anode rod attracts corrosive particles found inside the tank, protecting the tank liner and reducing the risk of explosion.

This anode can begin to erode and that can cause odor after a time. Or so it says on the Internet.

Yesterday, my husband attempted to replace this piece in our water heater, but it is screwed in so tightly that he and a neighbor could not get it free, not even with an impact wrench. He finally replaced the hot water heater elements to see if they could be the problem and left the anode in there.

The shower still stinks. So, it wasn't the water heater elements. But it could still be the anode.

It is cheaper to replace a hot water heater than to tear out a tiled shower and have it rebuilt, that much I know. So, when my husband has time, he is going to replace the hot water heater.

In the meantime, I will hold my nose in the shower and hope it really is the hot water heater.

This is just so weird.