Side Effect

First off, thank you all for the kind emails and calls wishing me a speedy recovery .

While the recovery is not yet complete, it is moving along in the right direction.
I will be attempting the Catalina channel in just 8 days!

There is, however, a very bizarre side effect that bears mentioning. Since being released from the hospital, I have noticed a very marked increase in my sense of smell. Suddenly everything is turned up and electrified. There are smells out there I never noticed before - especially people's breath! Whereas it was never a problem before, suddenly I find myself needing more distance from people when they are speaking to me.
At first I thought the obvious - could it be pregnancy?

Nope.

Dan suggested it might be a side effect of all the antibiotics and pain meds.

I googled that, but all I could find was a loss of sense of smell as a side effect to medication.

Alice suggested the antibiotics may have cleared up a persistent low-level sinus infection .

Alice is an amazing nurse, but leave it to a medical professional to dismiss it as something so mundane! Sure, my doctor did spend a lot of time looking up my nose last month grumbling about bay water pollutants and polyps, but that's just a coincidence!

While my friends propose somewhat more plausible theories, I don't think we should rule out one last possibility:

I was bit by a radioactive pit bull.
It might seem unlikely, but I know for a fact that the dog is insulin dependent. While doggie-diabetes may not necessarily be a symptom of radioactivity, it's a definite possibility.
It makes sense - if a radioactive spider bite can make a guy shoot webs and crawl up walls, maybe a radioactive dog bite gave me a canine sense of smell!

I haven't tried to chase cats or pee on fire hydrants yet, but what if this is just one of many new super canine powers?
At first glance, I admit it doesn't seem like the most desirable super-power, but hey Spiderman and all his fellow comic superheroes struggled with what at first seemed like embarrassing freakish abilities before figuring out how to use it for the greater good.

There's got to be a way that I, too, can channel my new ability to smell halitosis from afar to fight crime and save humanity.
There's just got to be...