Angela Read will never again be able to smell freshly cut grass or cigar smoke on a golf course. She mourns the loss of these small pleasures, but resists falling into cynicism.

“I don’t get myself stuck in the cycle of longing for what used to be,” Read, 54, of Phoenix, Arizona, tells TODAY.com. “This is just what normal is to me, and so it doesn’t really get me down.”

Read’s been dealing with this version of normal for five years, since she was diagnosed with olfactory neuroblastoma, also known as esthesioneuroblastoma, a rare cancer that typically begins on the roof of the nasal cavity.

What Read thought was a sinus infection or COVID turned out to be so much more.

Confusing Symptoms

When Read started experiencing congestion on one side of her nose in 2020, at first she thought she

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