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?
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 into 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 the 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 gets 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?
I know exactly what you mean. I've smelled it so strongly that it was amazing to me that others were not smelling it. One patient with pancreatic cancer had the odor so strongly that it was hard to be in the same room. Hers was not a sickly sweet smell...it's hard to describe, but it was more of an unusual, unpleasant dead flower kind of smell.
Yes, I smelled it with our dog before anything was apparent. He suddenly had a massive stroke and died. With him, it was several weeks before the stroke.
Specializes in LTC,Hospice/palliative care,acute care.
cjwensley said:
I smell it too, but this last time, the smell has been lingering strongly for 3 days. Could it be me?
Oh,Lovey-it's not you.It's stuck on you and you need a fresh breeze to blow it off.And a prayer .Smell coffee beans or fresh ground coffee,lavender,peppermint,orange...Or vanilla extract.
We humans are so dependent upon technology now that we tend to ignore our basic senses,our sense of smell,our intuition.Except for those of us in this field...
I know the smell too. I can smell it on some more than others. It is a very weird thing. I have been told it is a gift. I just don't really know how to feel about that or what to do with it.
Specializes in Psych (25 years), Medical (15 years).
I'm hard of smelling, but I get a feeling.
As a student LPN, I was returning to a patient's room to give him a bed bath and I immediately had this feeling. It's kind of like an adrenalin rush.
As a new RN, working the midnight shift on the CD tx unit, I was walking by a patient's room on the way to the cafeteria. Although I had performed a round on him a short time earlier and another wasn't yet due, I thought I'd poke my head in. Even though I could only see his outline in the semi-darkened room, I got that feeling again.
I called a code blue in both situations, but neither of the patients made it.
My MIL is currently in a hospice on end of life care, and has been for the last week. When we were visiting yesterday, I took a break and when returning to her room, I smelt a distinct acetone smell, like nail polish remover. No one else could smell it, only me. Today, her heart is still beating strongly and her lungs are clear, so we are still awaiting the final blow.
You are not a freak unless that makes me one too. I always could smell the odor of dying and sick people from when I was a little girl. Unfortunately I can tell a person is dying from about a month out... the smell is how you describe sickening sweet smell. I can also smell sickness about 3 days prior to people actually displaying symptoms. My mother use to tell when I was little to stop telling people they smelled sick or about to get sick. Only broken bones, muscle, things of that sort dont have a smell to me. But the dying smell is far worst to me... its like the smell just radiates from every pore of the person and fills the entire room or space with that sickening sweet odor. It's suffocating to me.
The only reason I am responding to this comment is because I smelled the odor of death on my father, about a month out. Yes he was under doctor care, But I knew once I smell that smell there was nothing esle the doctor could do. I could not tell my mother. I just made sure I spent as much time as possible with him and I was there when my father took his last breath last week.
I just wanted you to know you are not crazy, a freak, strange. sometimes it feels like a curse, sometimes its a gift when you can help someone. I am not a nurse or doctor. I did not have the courage to be one. Because my heart would break everytime I smelled the odor of death on any person. So I applaud you for sticking with it.
Your not a freak I too get the smell of death just before someone passes I'm not a nurse though but every time it appears I know that someone's going to die
Just an update on my previous comment last September...I noticed that the odor was stronger in some places than others. In the morning, at the breakfast table, in bed at night, in our bathroom, in my husband's office, it was always stronger than elsewhere.
3 weeks ago, my husband was diagnosed with cancer...the PET scan was just done and we don't have the results, but his symptoms lead me to believe his liver, lungs, spine and other bones are all involved. Today, I smelled it in his breath. He's in horrible pain. He's had cancer all this time and I thought I was losing my mind, smelling this odor. It grows stronger and stronger every day. At times, it's hard to be near him. He's always been very neat and clean...he's always smelled nice...I believe he's dying.
James W.
146 Posts
In my personal & professional experience..
( & having always had an acutely sensitive sense of smell),
both ( predictable) dying & death ( expected, & sudden, unexpected)
..all produce distinctive odours.
From hunting/farm experience of killing, then cleaning/butchering animals - as a kid -
to viewing recently dead people in road crashes ( some of whom were teenage friends),
to witnessing death events in psych nurse training, again, both sudden unexpected
from hanging, self immolation, jumping from height, to bloody wreckage from self crushing under truck wheels to vicious murder, to 'natural' death -
from 'stillbirth' to 'old age' dementia,
& on through my nursing career - all types had 'odd' smells,
- including the obvious stuff, & some from RX/Tx, or even perhaps 'fear'..
Cadavers smell different too, even as turned from cooling/cold side,
to the fluid pooling hot side for a final wash..
Hope that does not come across as too creepy,
I maintain that as an RN, my primary duty is to the living,
I would not choose to work in the morticians field, nor as a
regular autopsy attendant, let alone in an abattoir..