The Smell of Death!?

Nurses General Nursing

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I work in a nursing home and am surrounded by dying patients. Cancer patients, patients with ulcers and necrotic tissue, hospice patients -- They all emit a very similar smell.

After I work, I can smell that same smell of death on myself. Not in my scrubs, but coming from MY BODY! I kinda just blew it off until my boyfriend brought up that he smelled a "rotting animal" on a night when I smelled the death smell particularly strongly on myself.

What could this be? I'm worried that something is wrong with me. Is it possible that I'm inhaling the molecules and am now emitting the smell from my pores?

working inpt hospice, every.single.day. my husband would complain about me smelling of death.

for a long time, i thought it was his psychological reaction to me literally working around dying/death all day long, but even my kids would complain.

i wash my clothes separately, and shower/scrub from head to toe.

and i too use lemon juice as a final rinse.

but if i neglect to only shower, w/o washing my hair, then my family still complains.

i figure all those organisms we work around, would take its toll on us.

afterall, if we can become colonized with many of these germs, why wouldn't they emit any odors?

scrub it all away.

and i bleach my work clothes as well.

leslie

I haven't noticed a smell of death -very little experience so far with the dying and dead - but I have come home with the odor of illness and antibiotic-altered excreta in my excreta without being ill myself. It would last for a couple days after taking care of a patient with a characteristic odor. Very strange, I have no explanation.

Sorry for asking such a dumb question, but do you ever find that there are situations where the patient would opt for a DNR (probably because they are tired and ready to leave this life...) and yet the family refuses to make them a DNR?

Which brings up another question...are the wishes of the family given more weight than that of the ACTUAL PATIENT? (Sorry, don't mean to yell, put there for emphasis...)

I know in the case of my grandmother, she opted for a DNR and she is currently in the nursing home...I'm not sure how much longer she has to go, so I guess we'll have to wait and see...

Joey

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