[Independent] Meet the woman who can smell Parkinson’s disease.Joy Milne, a retired nurse, has an extraordinary sense of smell. However, it goes beyond simply having a very sensitive nose.
Milne has the ability to detect Parkinson’s disease years before a doctor’s diagnosis.
As described by Milne herself: "I’m in a tiny, tiny branch of the population somewhere between a dog and a human."
She first stumbled across her unusual gift when her husband Les started omitting a strange odour.
At first, Milne attributed the smell to bad hygiene on her husband’s part, but everything changed when the couple attended a Parkinson’s meeting.
She then realised that her husband smelt the same as the other people in the room. 10 years later, Les was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
"I smelled it 10 to 12 years before Les was diagnosed," Milne explains. "As the Parkinson’s got worse, the smell got worse.
"It became just part of him, but I with my sensitive sense of smell, I could smell it all the time and it became quite uncomfortable really, but I had the sense not to nag too much."
According to Milne, Parkinson’s disease has a very thick, musky smell.