Does Death Have A Smell?

I've heard about bad patients asking to have a BM, and nurses knowing that that was it, we've all heard about the "last turn", but does anyone else smell anything beforehand? Nurses General Nursing Article

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Bill Levinson

1 Article; 69 Posts

I think Oscar the Cat can tell by odor when somebody is going to die.

Farawyn

12,646 Posts

Beef and Cheese.

No, wait. That's the Imposter Santa from Elf.

mago8388

163 Posts

No but blood and flesh do especially in the OR

Specializes in Labor and Delivery.

I had dreams about my sweet baby cousin who was born with a myriad of congenital anormalties that left her unable to walk, talk, orally ear, hear or see. She died at 3 and A few months before she finally went home to glory, I dreamed that she was running around smiling and saying her ABCs. When I had that dream I knew her time was near.. I was right.

Specializes in ER, progressive care.

There is a smell to death. It's kind of musty and sweet from my experience, with my first experience being from my father passing away from cancer. I've experienced that same smell from other patients dying from a variety of illnesses.

In the ER though, I don't really experience a smell. When it's something sudden, I tend to get more a gut feeling than notice a smell.

Is anyone in south jersey cause I think I know the smell you all are talking about. My father lives with me and I smell this smell that I can't place. No one else smells it with the exception of my wife. We both have sensitivity to smell.

AngelfireRN said:
Just wondering if anyone else has experiences like this?

I first noticed it when I was in nursing school, and we were orienting on the floor. We would go in a room with a patient, and I would smell this sicky-sweet odor, and around a week later, the patient would be dead.

It continues to this day. I have smelled Lord knows how many smells, but this one almost defies description. The only way I can compare it to anything is to think of really concentrated Swish and Swallow, that nystatin stuff. I love the way it smells, but this other smell is like S&S overkill.

I finally started piecing it together when I noticed a pattern with the smell and the demise. My instructors never could understand why I would walk in a room to help, and get a weird look on my face. My co-workers later could not understand it, they just knew something was up by the look on my face. It was especially sad when the patient was thought to be improving.

It happened with my FIL. DH knew that SOMETHING happened to me when a person was about to pass, and I had already told him that I was not going to tell him if I sensed anything. The last time I saw FIL was the only time I did not hug him. I would have bawled, and given it away. I regret not hugging him, but not like I would regret giving my MIL and DH 4 days of a deathwatch. Afterward, as we were headed to the funeral home, DH looked at me, all teary, and said "You knew, didn't you? You've been weird since we saw him the last time."

Smelled it with my Grandmother, and squalled for 3 days solid, before there was really anything to squall about.

And I smell it still, with patients I see in hospital. I hate this. It's as bad as getting that gut feeling to pull the code cart outside the lady's room. There is no more helpless feeling than knowing what is going to happen, and knowing just as well that you're powerless to stop it.

Anyone else get this, or get an inkling as to the demise of a patient? I've heard about bad patients asking to have a BM, and nurses knowing that that was it, we've all heard about the "last turn", but does anyone else smell anything beforehand?

Or am I just a freak?

Never refer to yourself as possible freak. You are experiencing something unique.

As for me.. I have many years at the bedside and have experienced many smells and many deaths. I have never smelled death, before or after.

I call that .. score one for ME!

Are you guys sure that these odors you speak of aren't simply the smell of being unwashed? What I've smelled I can best describe as "sour", and have chalked that up to the fact that as people get more and more ill, they become less capable of bathing and more reliant on bed-baths. As I'm sure we all know, bed-baths are okay for short-term management of hygiene, but even the most diligent CNA (as I was) or nurse can't keep a patient smelling clean for very long, especially if they rely on diapers.

Flash forward to my vet tech days and I can tell you that sick and/or elderly animals smell slightly sour/sickly sweet. They're not necessarily approaching death, but are simply unable to groom themselves as they would when they were healthy. My cat, however, rest her beautiful soul, declined very quickly after her cancer diagnosis (she passed about three weeks after her diagnosis) and never developed any odor. She was refusing to eat or drink, which meant she was producing very little to no stool and urine, which is probably why she didn't start smelling.

Diane6

1 Post

My father is currently dying in a hospice and all of the family members in the room can smell an odour coming off him. In the hospice grounds, away from my father's room, are three or four horse chestnut trees in bloom. While stretching our legs earlier, me and my daughter had a sniff of the flowers and it was the exact same scent - a slightly sweet rot. Might it be acetone? We were taken aback because we'd been trying to describe the smell without success all day. "It's like horse chestnut flowers" seems the best way to describe it for us from now on!

ktwlpn, LPN

3,844 Posts

Specializes in LTC,Hospice/palliative care,acute care.

Yes,there are smells,there is also a "look" you'll learn to recognize.One of my patients worked with dogs-he says we humans have evolved so much and become dependent on our electronics that we now ignore our intuition.Dogs and cats still have that.We need to learn to listen to it within ourselves.

I know the smell. It reminds me of wet dog - musty, sweet, and...humid? I know humid isn't a smell, but the smell has a moist quality to it.

T-Bird78

1,007 Posts

Yes, death has a smell. I had heard about it but smelled it in person after I graduated nursing school. My aunt's sister was dying from cancer and was at home. My mom and I took some food to the house and visited with her sister for a minute and I smelled it. My mom didn't smell it but I did. Six hours later she was gone, peacefully in her sleep. I smelled it again 7 years later when my father-in-law was dying from cancer, also at home on hospice care. I noticed the smell, nobody else did, and he passed several hours later, lso in the middle of the night. It's definitely a unique smell and once you smell it you instinctly know it--and don't forget it. I can't quite explain the odor but it stays with you.