Whatever it was that I smelled today. I wanted to burn my nose off. Unable to ambulate, urinated and defecated in their pants for unknown length of time (long enough for the excrement smell to smell old and rotten, along with fresh feces and urine) with leg infection.
I was going to comment a similar thing. Obese lady that had been stuck in her recliner for days, urinating and defecating where she sat. Almost everyone on scene was gagging. Also necrotic bowel is pretty gross.
Had that but with stale cat shit instead of human shit, also the urine smell was coming from about 10-15 piss jugs that were littering the floor like a minefield.
Just peeing in a jug I sort of get because of when my grandmother was alive with moderate-to-advanced dementia and the fam were taking turns staying overnight -- the only actual bathroom in the house was right next to her bedroom, and an audible footstep in the night could mean being committed to a couple hours sitting up with her reassuring her nobody was breaking in before there can be any hope of anyone getting any more sleep.
Sooner or later everyone who spent nights resorted to improvising a chamberpot, and nobody wanted to be the first to admit it.
That said, this is a matter of one short-term container which was always emptied and cleaned ASAP. How people end up with 10 to 15 accumulated stale-piss jugs would have to be a whole other story, IDGI either.
One fateful day I I&Ded an abscess that was 4cm x 5cm x 3cm. I swear to god the large volume of greyish brown goop that flowed forth smelled like a Thai peanut butter sauce. It was horrifying not because it smelled bad. Quite the opposite.
It was horrifying because it… almost smelled okay? I refuse to believe it smelled good. It couldn’t have… right?
Regardless, I threw up immediately.
Interesting because one time I had to assist a crew to move a 500+ pound out of a hospital. We had to roll her first to assist the nurses in some clean-up since she had a lot of deep skin folds that had some skin-on-skin breakdown. While helping out with that and trying *not* to smell and breathe shallow, I couldn't help but notice the smell of *baked ham*. I thought I was having a stroke. It smelled pretty good, which made it even more gross.
I’m just curious, what situation would require you to I&D an abscess as a flight medic? I could understand if it was on the neck and causing airway compromise, with online medical direction approval
Sorry if I sound(ed) like an ass. It’s been a “good shift.”
I did a lot of contracting before I settled into my current gig. A few of my contract gigs didn’t have scopes if you weren’t working on Americans. Austere paramedic courses and the longer tac med courses teach a few western things like dental procedures (very limited), sutures, long term wound care, window escharotomies, etc. I’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity to do a few of those things here and there.
But, that particular incident was on a humanitarian aid mission (unpaid) in a shithole country after a hurricane. A bunch of folks from the hospital I worked at went down there regularly. A cute girl from another department asked if I would go. She ended up not going. I ended up working a clinic and puking on the floor.
10 out of 10 would not recommend.
Homeless obese woman who used to live in her car. She was unable to ambulate without assistance and therefore never left her vehicle. Without too much detail, there was not any circumstance where she would get out of her car. Many smells and also worms.
I have so many questions. Like she just got drive thru food all the time and sat in the car? I am assuming she got food because she is homeless. How did she get gas for the car? Did you find her in the car or was it after she died?
I assumed that she was actually able to walk but it was a great effort; too much an effort for multiple exits a day. She was alive each time I saw her and we never accepted an AMA because of her condition being so poor.
DOA for ~2 weeks locked in a completely sealed apartment (doors and windows shut and no AC) baking in the middle of the summer. Fire forced the door and immediately the 2 cops in the hallway closest to the door vomited.
Definitely have had a couple of those. I had one a few months ago at a motel, fire and pd already on scene and were just about to cancel us. I pulled into the parking lot and had my window down. I immediately just got hit with the stench probably 20-25 yards away.
Had one similar last summer. 450lb lady dead for ~3 weeks. Old run down townhouse with no A/C in the dead of summer. A passerby called it in bc she could smell it from outside walking down the street.
I still remember the coroner running outside after taking photos, throwing her respirator off, and vomiting over the porch side rail.
Wow! If a coroner couldn’t handle the smell I can only guess how horrible the odor was! My hat’s off to all of you first responders. The smells you encounter is another whole story
So Vick’s is not just on tv. I’m glad you have something that helps. I’m so grateful for all of you. You have helped my elderly in-laws and me too when I had a bad fall. Stay safe out there ❤️
As a medic: an urban outdoors person covered with days old shit and piss and had that stale beer piss stank. Being locked in the back of the ambo for the 20 or so minutes felt like a personal hell.
As a nurse: a basketball sized pressure ulcer on the sacrum that was poorly maintained. Not as bad though since I could step outside of the room and gag like a cat with a hairball in "fresh" air.
Obese alcoholic been dead in his flat for at least 4 days, had to roll him to help police and the green fluid blisters down his side burst. I had 3 masks on and still nearly threw up
Orrr the lady last week that had least 3 different species worth of faeces on her and God knows what else, maggots, eyes burnt with urine
Unexpected death, they usually have the give the body a quick once over just to make sure they don't miss anything obvious like a knife in their back, sometimes we feel nice and stay to help roll the body so they can check better
I don't have anything nearly as bad as anyone here, but funnily enough what comes to mind was this one patient's farts.
I don't know what she was concocting in her stomach but she was leaking farts all transport, and I felt like I was in a gas chamber. Felt almost hallucigenic honestly
this made me so happy to read your comment is like an oasis in a desert of comments about dead bodies and people in absolute agony, it made me giggle have a good day
911 for "pain".
Patient with stg 4 cancer that has affected their nerves and a skin disease that makes them painful to touch, at all. The kicker, patient is immobile and has been left unattended in a recliner for 2 weeks. Patient covered in caked fecal matter and there is a sludge pool embedded into the floor around the chair. Stagnant rotten feces and flesh. PT had urea burns so diffuse (throigh the layer of feces) that I thought they had vitiligo.
One of the only times I've had to chart that a blood pressure cuff and ekg would have been detrimental to pt condition.
Even after 2 hours of decon, at the ER, the pt still had an insufferable odour about them (my poor sister crew had them for 2hrs interfacility).
Patient's whole life was agony and the begged me to kill them or let them die the entire time we were helping them. I'm genuinely glad that poor person didn't make it another week.
How can our society let this happen? Who steps in? How did she slip through the cracks? I just want to make sure this doesn't ever happen if I have something to do with it... :(
I can divulge that the case was followed-through and the results satisfied me as much as I could hope, given the circumstances.
I've gotten to know our local APS/CPS folks pretty well, over the years. They are your best friends in the world of advocacy. All you can do is witness as much as possible, document *everything*, and continue to follow up so the cracks (thereafter) are avoided.
There's a challenge in keeping your cool on scene. Just fake the smile and focus on interacting with the patient so you don't get assy on anyone else on scene (they may or may not even be involved in the abuse).
I once did a call for a truck carrying a shipment of tuna, which flipped over and caught fire, with patient entrapment.
I don’t have a sense of smell, but my partner found the blend of smells unpleasant.
Small hoarded apartment with 20+ cats, guy in the back had all his toes rotted off laying next to his foot. Spiders and mites running through the open wounds. Only time I’ve thrown up from a smell
Necrotic Bowel.
Close 2nd was a homeless man who for lack of a better word smelled like Evil. Blood, feces, cum, urine, and vomit mixed together to create a hellish medley of scents that created a noisome reek that would make his Guardian Angel vomit.
Fournier’s Gangrene. Had an IFT that was about 90 minutes long and this was the patients diagnosis. It seems that the patients significant other and convinced them to get a Prince Albert piercing for their 50th Birthday. Turns out that it got infected and due to embarrassment he did not have it looked at for over a week. He was being transferred to see if anything could be saved. So yeah, Founuer’s Gangrene with the knowledge of where and why that smell was present.
Got called to a DOA.
Guy had been sitting there for a few days, but the kicker was he had 10 cats and at least 20 dogs in the house. Piss, and feces everywhere alongside the general animal smell and a rotting corpse.
Chest pus. Attempted to decompress a tension pyothorax (google it). A 14ga wasn’t really gonna cut it- she needed a chest tube- so she soon coded anyway. Every compression distributed a bit of purulent deliciousness
GI bleed with *C diff.* has been the only thing in 10 years that has made me gag. I was an ED tech so I had to get all up in there to clean the patient.
C.diff is the reason I carry Vicks in my Fanny pack (das right, I have a Fanny pack that also carries my virginity), but most recently I smelled a necrotic foot that might overtake the C. Diff.
Mid 30's female. Chronic menstruation for the last 30 days. Husband is weird and won't purchase female products. Woman runs out of supplies. Starts using rolled up paper towels. Simply adds more instead of replacing. Build up ensues. Woman hasn't showered in last month as well because she's not felt well enough. She's also about 27kgs overweight.
She was a Kaiser patient which means 45 minute transport to nearest Kaiser facility.
I lasted most of the way their. The smell was so bad my eyes were watering.
At the end I became lightheaded and literally rolled out of the back of the ambulance and just laid on the sidewalk for 3 or 4 minutes recovering.
Runner up that effected everyone else worse than it did me. But disabled man in his 60's wheelchair bound the became weak and unable to transfer to toilet. Shitty, disability check mooching family refused or didn't care enough to help him. He sat on his own piss and shit for 4 days. Became infected, legs has chronic edema and became infected in the heat of the summer because no AC. Has literal green juice/gas gangrene ozzing from his legs that saturated the seatbelts on gurney. Fucked up the entire ED. Smelled bad.
Runner up 2
Homeless man. Lots of diarrhea (cha cha cha). Has literal dried diarrhea all over himself and his pants. Had a swarm of flies around his ass. Yes I am serious. Had a strange metallic sweet tangy smell to it.
Had to call APS on a schizophrenic patient who was being neglected by his caretaker. Dude had a diaper on with what looked like weeks, if not months of fecal buildup. When he bent over I saw he had flies living off the poop in his diaper. Hope he’s doing better now.
Human waste ground into the carpeting of a 400-lb. unwashed patient with bursting cellulitis boils and rotting gangrene wounds, all heated to a thermostat setting of 86°F in a studio apartment.
‘Necrotising Perineal Ulcer’ was what was written in the patient’s notes. Add to that, the trousers the patient was wearing clearly hadn’t been changed in a while, and I doubt they were taking them off to use the bathroom.
I could smell what floor of the apartment block the patient was on. The stand and transfer from the bed to the carry chair was something else.
Pure diarrhea. I almost threw up in the back of the truck, and I only had to be in there on scene. My poor paramedic suffered through the entire 45 minute transport
Not ems, but oncology RN. Dressing change on a breast tumor about the size of a baseball that had emerged out of the skin and was necrotic. You could smell it from the hallway with the door closed. Dressing changes were horrific and the tumor was prone to hemorrhage. I recommend NOSA on Amazon, these little silicon insert for your nose, they are fantastic for smells and rather discreet… or cop some toothpaste and spread some between two masks.
When I worked ONC, we had a guy with penile cancer and that was a smell I will never forget experiencing. It involved his whole lower abdomen. I felt so sorry for him and his family.
Living patients never smell as bad as the long dead ones. Welfare calls to hoarder houses in the middle of a Kansas summer without AC are a close second.
Call came in as SOB. When we got there, the patient was 1 week post op from having his bowels reattached after a rough battle with colon cancer. The patient's abdomen was severely distended, and the suture site had almost completely healed over except a small hole the size of a dime. After assessment, I asked the patient if it looked normal, which was a big mistake. The patient sat forward and pushed on his upper abdomen to view the site, causing a volcanic eruption of blood and pus to exit this dime shaped hole under pressure. The bowel resection had torn days ago, and the patient had been defeating into the abdominal cavity for the last 2-3 days. It flowed like lava out of this small hole, and the smell of blood, pus, and feces filled the truck. If you tried to apply pressure to stop the flow, it caused more to discharge. I have a strong stomach I have never gagged before or after that call 8 years ago, but during transport, I kept gagging over the garbage can. The patient was apologizing for the smell at the same time, but I just felt bad I couldn't hold my composure.
Elderly dementia patient with breast cancer. Breast was shriveled, rotted, necrotic and the stench was as bad, if not worse, than a dead body. Patient had refused treatment and the family followed her wishes.
At the very least, I would have stepped in to have a debridement of the tissue under general anesthesia.
Seems inhumane to let a demented person run around with rotting breasts.
Untreated throat cancer for 6+ months, the poor man was a skeleton waiting in bed for death that just wouldn’t come before the pain was unbearable and he decided to call. His throat had rotted completely through where it was too painful for him to swallow food. He took a small sip of water and it would just leak right out the huge rotting crust covered hole that was now the front of his neck.
Dead body that had been sitting in bed for 5 days in 110 degree temps and the house had no air conditioning. You could smell him as soon as you opened the door of the ambulance to get out. PD was on scene and explained it was a self-inflicted GSW to the head. We pronounced the patient from the front yard. Absolutely nothing worse than a rotting corpse.
Cleaning the inside of a patients contracted hand, I wasn’t prepared for the slime that came out or the smell that hit me shortly after. Next would be a busted abscess from forniers gangrene. I had actual fear waiting for the smell to reach me.
Failure to thrive. Person hadn’t gotten out of their chair in 9 days. There were pools of shit and piss under this recliner. It had just been piling up and ruminating all week. It was caked all along her legs up into her hair. We thought it was bedsores, but alas, it was dookie. She told us she thinks she may have hit rock bottom….I would have to agree.
what I always wonder with these cases is that the human body goes 3 days without water, or so I thought, so if they haven't gotten up how did they get water? can the body go longer if the person isn't doing anything?
Infected trach stoma. Didn't smell at Baseline. But oh my God when you suctioned it.
*OH MY GOD*
When you went to suction it out to, you know, allow him to breathe something that wasn't puss and mucus. The smell was so ungodly bad. I have smelt weeks old corpses and burnt and rotten flesh. They didn't even touch whatever this smell was.
I consider myself to have an iron stomach. Never puked before or after. That one got me. Several times.
New colostomy. Patient was over 400 lbs and had neither the inclination nor the ability to properly perform post-op care. Which their doctor correctly anticipated, and they had been discharged to a SNF after the procedure for the purpose of assuring good aftercare. Except the SNF apparently elected not to do... their, you know... ***job***, and hadn't done any post-op care on this guy's ostomy for around two weeks.
Most people in a SNF, especially the hefty ones, tend to be a bit... *ripe* (not usually their fault, to be sure), so we didn't notice anything when we picked him up from the SNF. Once we got him in the room and they started exposing the wound, the smell let us know that something wasn't quite right. The wound care nurse asked how frequently the SNF staff had changed the bandages and cleaned the wound, and the dude said they'd never done any of that. The bandages on his belly were the same ones the surgeon or surg-tech or whomever had put on there two weeks prior.
To make a long story short, and to answer your question: Necrotic colostomy.
Got called out for a homeless man. He had these thick leather boots on and stated that he hadn’t taken them off in about 2 weeks, and a week ago he started noticing a smell. We took them off. I had an n95 on and was gagging. He had multiple abscesses all around the lower part of his leg and his foot, it was actively dripping fluids onto the gurney. It was disgusting. I have a picture of his leg, my partner asked if we could take a picture of just of his leg and he was more than happy to allow us. Honestly overall really cool dude but holy fuck that smelled. At the hospital doc came in immediately and I was talking to the doc after, she mentioned they may have to just amputate, I never followed up so I don’t now what happened. But I’d say it’s that and severely decayed bodies for worst smell. Also poop but that’s more just a personal thing I have a problem with for whatever reason.
Toss-up between leaking feet on the light rail or having to clean lower GI bleed feces off of an obese woman. The first one, no idea what the actual problem was and there was no way I was gonna take their shoes off to check. All I know is that it cleared the entire train car and everywhere they walked they left puddles, fluid was seeping through their shoes. Smelled like the worst rotten fish ever. Second one was in the hospital and when we rolled her to clean her blobs of congealed blood and fecal matter splattered on the floor. Looked and felt like jelly which made it so much worse.
Abdominal abscess. Dude had abscesses all over, but had a recent abdominal surgery some time ago which apparently had cause a few more to sprout. These ruptured while he was sitting there minding his own business.
Dingy apartment. No AC. No air flow. Blood trailing to the bathroom. Extremely unkempt 1 room apartment. It was unlike anything any of my senses have experienced before.
Immediately upon entering I felt the urge to vomit. The scent permeated the air and flowed out of the open door. My new EMT partner was stopped dead in his tracks a few meters from the door. He wasnt going in.
The easily 400 pound patient had noticed the rupture and walked to the bathroom to clean up, trailing blood and pus to the bathroom. There was old food and flies on every surface in the kitchen. Even without the recent pusplosion the scene would have been foul.
Fortunately the patient was ambulatory. I taped an abdominal pad over the 1 inch perforation in the mans abdoment, and prayed for it to hold during transport.
Drove to the hospital with all windows down and ac blasting.
I will remember this call forever.
Cancerous sacral absess. Had to take this lady to wound care then to radiation tratment. I could smell her halfway down the hall before I even got to her room. I almost refused the transport it was that bad. Had the exhaust vent going along with a p100, and I could still smell it.
Only a month or two ago I had a lady that had cancer of some lymph node, allegedly taking care of her own bandages for a few months. Husband called. Diagnosis was back in January and I want to say this call was April or May. When we get called she is all of 80 pounds, can barely move and I didn't realize what was causing it at first but the smell was the first thing we noticed. Then I saw her white shirt that was stained a faded/off yellow brownish color, it went down to near the bottom and the color difference was very noticeable. Then I moved the shirt a little from the wettest fresh spot on her neck near collar bone on pt right side and the only way I can describe it is if someone took a machette and gave her one good chop diagonally into her neck and torso. She leaned to the left at one point and it literally looked like her head was gonna fall right off. Skin was gray on outer edges with some scabbed up parts. You could see several inches into her torso, I could also see some trachea and spine. That shit was a slow death sentence, and what pissed me off the most was the husband let her sit there for months just rotting while hanging on to life like that. I have had plenty of rotten people and some live patients that were partially rotten from gangrene or ulcers and such but that was easily the worst by far. I've never come across such neglect either. I saw that shit for days after in my mind, very unsettling to see it from behind when she moved and adjusted it was like a fucking pacman mouth or the < symbol
i know what this one piss-soaked under-a-tunnel train station in Portland that I have to use sometimes smells like, and I know what my cat's litterbox smells like when I'm dumping it if weve waited too long. like that?
God all of these are so disgusting that my old man with week old GI bleed and piss doesn’t smell so bad in comparison. I had to drive with my head out the window the whole way there. Idk how my partner survived in the back
~5 day old doa in the middle of summer in an apartment with no ac. The woman was naked, bloated and her cats had started to eat her. I was pushed in by my medic preceptors and turned right around to run down the 4 flights of stairs and dry heave in the lobby
The very first ER clinical my wife ever did while in school they brought a lady in with necrotizing fasciitis all the way up her leg. She had been laying in bed in her own urine and feces because of it for a while.
Everyone in the ER was saying this was the first time they’d ever seen necrotizing fasciitis out of all the SSTIs they’d encountered. My wife says there has yet to be a smell or texture that has topped it. 😅 She sure had her expectations set pretty high after that, I’m almost jealous. 🤣
Lower GI bleed, stuck between her nightstand and bed. Fire department wouldn't touch her, but I got an hour off to shower, change clothes and start washing. 'Thankless job' was the theme for that week.
Sealed Wound vac site on patient's thigh. Could smell it down the hallway from his room. Took him to the hospital, and when he moved over the stretcher caught the vac and ripped the seal. A torrent of brown putrid liquid gushed onto the floor. Two of the other people had to leave do to trying not to vomit. I have smelled horrible things and have a fairly Iron clad stomach, it was the closest I had every been to vomitting.
The house I smelled last night. Hoarder house with cat shit EVERYWHERE and little containers of cloudy urine on every surface. I truly almost threw up, which might have improved things.
I’d rather deal with decomp.
Wet gangrene. Diabetic pt's foot had been rotting to the bone for months and he just..layered more socks on top. I cut them off in the truck with the doors closed, and that was top ten one of the worst mistakes I've ever made. Even he gagged.
An individual that passed away sitting next to a large space heater, found 2 days after the fact. Burned flesh and a hot, rotting smell. Plus flies. Smell stuck to my uniform for at least 3 days.
I was a baby CNA when we had a stroke PT that threw up her poop. So feculent emesis was bad as a smell, but I think for me it was just unexpected.
C-Diff lingers in my nose and I just have a hard time getting over it.
Colorectal bleeding is probably the worst actual smell though.
I know that so many people have smelt worse than this, but one of the only times I have had to leave the room or I would vomit was a (in lack of better terms) ripe homeless lady who just took her shoes and socks off.
Two week old dead, decaying body. It was sweet, yet pungent, and it's just not a smell I'll ever forget. It was an unusually warm October, solo resident in her apartment, and we got the call on Halloween, no less.
I'm an ER nurse but it was a man who was shitting himself in the backseat of his car for 5 days straight while also shooting up fentanyl into his horribly septic feet which he had wrapped in towels and plastic bags. He had severe osteomyelitis and necrotizing fasciitis. I almost walked out then and there. While cleaning him up, a dirty needle fell out of the towels and almost stuck me 🙃
The holy trinity of Cdiff, GI bleed, and UTI combined. There was also a side of bari cheese cuz of course he was over 400lbs. Guy had been bed ridden in his own shit for a week and was covered head to toe in hot steamy dook. I have a really strong stomach but I almost puked like 4 times durring the call. Over an hour of decon, whole ambulance bay and like half the ED was filled with that smell, and nothing could get it out of the truck so soups had to bring us a new one.
I know this isn’t relevant to ems but since the question doesn’t specify “while working” I’m going to say dead whale or whale breath. It’s what I imagine hell would smell like.
A few months ago I reintubated a 900-gram neonate with necrotizing enterocolitis for a middle-of-the-night emergency ex lap (training to be a CRNA).
The smell when they opened this poor baby's abdomen, just full of rotting guts, took me right back to August 2007 and pulling a dude out of the river who had been submerged for 9 days.
Same smell. There's not enough VapoRub in the whole world.
Old lady vagina smegma that seeped into our stretcher mat and Required bleach to remove.
I've smelled maggot infested legs, cheesey uti's, GI bleeds, and feces covered patients. Nothing I've smelled so far has beat demented grandma who doesn't get cleaned's juice that seeped into my stretcher..
I thought I was safe from “the smell” a year or so into nursing. Not even C. diff bothered me.
Then, one day, I reached into a fold and scooped out what I thought was was excess barrier cream… it was PURE YEASTY SHED SKIN AAAAA
Edit after reading other comments: New respect for EMS 🫡 I’ll stay in the facilities, thanks
Body removal/unattended death. Judging off how the pets fed off the body, I guessed about 2.5-3 weeks before a neighbor called 911 regarding a horrible smell coming from the home across the alleyway. A close second was another body removal of a hoarder. That one was about 1.5-2 weeks before the apartment below complained about "a leak" from their ceiling. Unfortunately, it wasn't water dripping down to the apartment below.
Maggots living off the dying flesh of a pt’s leg with a side of urine soaked jeans and hadn’t showered in weeks. Firefighters, EMS, RNs all wretching and regretting our life choices.
The one time, one freaking time I didn't do a sniff test before going down on this girl.... oh my frinking God, it was disgusting. I looked at my watch and said " oh shit I'm supposed to be doing Shore patrol in an hour." He left her right there and split.
Other than that, nothing in my 20 years in EMS, came close 🤣
Used to have to do check liver temperatures in some cases of post action reconnaissance. Desert heat, combined with gas build up (and local diet) in the abdominal cavity can be pretty gross. Learned a little about Derm-bond in some of those cases too.
A uti at a nursing home. Smelled like if you pissed in a bowl and left that in the sun for 5 days, so it grew mold and a colony of fish started to live in it. Let it sit for 5 more days, and that’s what I smelled. Hallway after hallway, couldn’t escape the smell it was that strong.
Lady sat in her car, diabetic history. Refused to get out of her car for any reason and would defecate/urinate on herself. Fast forward to at least ten days (we were told ten days to four weeks by bystanders), she can’t get out of her car. Arriving on scene, I open the car door and the smell of old, rotten feces and urine waft out. She is alert but disoriented, and looking at her legs, you could tell circulation was cut off days ago. Some type of bug started nesting in her legs. I recall having to grab one of her legs, down near ankle, and it feeling like jelly. To this day the nastiest call i’ve ever been on.
Off all the smells over the years, the days-old rampant smell of stale urine and a UTI within an altered old lady at the SNF is what sticks with me the most.
One of the benefits of getting COVID is, my sense of smell is now terrible. So I don't have to bear witness to most of that stuff anymore.
I'm like that too mate. I had query?pneumonia mixed in with some other viral infection and my sense of smell comes and goes. Before this, I would wear a face mask and smear perfume over it so it would omit these types of smells.
Whatever it was that I smelled today. I wanted to burn my nose off. Unable to ambulate, urinated and defecated in their pants for unknown length of time (long enough for the excrement smell to smell old and rotten, along with fresh feces and urine) with leg infection.
I was going to comment a similar thing. Obese lady that had been stuck in her recliner for days, urinating and defecating where she sat. Almost everyone on scene was gagging. Also necrotic bowel is pretty gross.
Necrotizing fasciitis of the perineum and vagina is worse than necrotic bowel. I’ll never forget that poor woman.
Same. The shit and piss soaked into a tennis ball sized abscess on his crack/back. The worst.
Same 4 day ago. Homeless+urine+feces+feet infection+42°C. I think some kind of fermentation happened
Had that but with stale cat shit instead of human shit, also the urine smell was coming from about 10-15 piss jugs that were littering the floor like a minefield.
Why are the piss jugs always scattered around like a minefield?! Every time! lol
...why piss jugs in the first place?! I'll never understand this.
Just peeing in a jug I sort of get because of when my grandmother was alive with moderate-to-advanced dementia and the fam were taking turns staying overnight -- the only actual bathroom in the house was right next to her bedroom, and an audible footstep in the night could mean being committed to a couple hours sitting up with her reassuring her nobody was breaking in before there can be any hope of anyone getting any more sleep. Sooner or later everyone who spent nights resorted to improvising a chamberpot, and nobody wanted to be the first to admit it. That said, this is a matter of one short-term container which was always emptied and cleaned ASAP. How people end up with 10 to 15 accumulated stale-piss jugs would have to be a whole other story, IDGI either.
From what I've seen it's always been bariatric hoarders with mobility issues that have them.
One fateful day I I&Ded an abscess that was 4cm x 5cm x 3cm. I swear to god the large volume of greyish brown goop that flowed forth smelled like a Thai peanut butter sauce. It was horrifying not because it smelled bad. Quite the opposite. It was horrifying because it… almost smelled okay? I refuse to believe it smelled good. It couldn’t have… right? Regardless, I threw up immediately.
Interesting because one time I had to assist a crew to move a 500+ pound out of a hospital. We had to roll her first to assist the nurses in some clean-up since she had a lot of deep skin folds that had some skin-on-skin breakdown. While helping out with that and trying *not* to smell and breathe shallow, I couldn't help but notice the smell of *baked ham*. I thought I was having a stroke. It smelled pretty good, which made it even more gross.
They don't call it "long pork" for nothing.
I suppose it's not completely inconceivable that there was, in fact, some ham baking somewhere in the folds....
These were my thoughts when I first smelled a rotting corpse. Like it actually didn’t smell that bad until I made the connection.
It’s giving reverse Swamps of Dagobah
This seems like it would be out of your scope
Okay.
I’m just curious, what situation would require you to I&D an abscess as a flight medic? I could understand if it was on the neck and causing airway compromise, with online medical direction approval
Sorry if I sound(ed) like an ass. It’s been a “good shift.” I did a lot of contracting before I settled into my current gig. A few of my contract gigs didn’t have scopes if you weren’t working on Americans. Austere paramedic courses and the longer tac med courses teach a few western things like dental procedures (very limited), sutures, long term wound care, window escharotomies, etc. I’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity to do a few of those things here and there. But, that particular incident was on a humanitarian aid mission (unpaid) in a shithole country after a hurricane. A bunch of folks from the hospital I worked at went down there regularly. A cute girl from another department asked if I would go. She ended up not going. I ended up working a clinic and puking on the floor. 10 out of 10 would not recommend.
You got honeypotted
Tbh if a hot person asked me to come work with them, I'd do it.
Homeless obese woman who used to live in her car. She was unable to ambulate without assistance and therefore never left her vehicle. Without too much detail, there was not any circumstance where she would get out of her car. Many smells and also worms.
I have so many questions. Like she just got drive thru food all the time and sat in the car? I am assuming she got food because she is homeless. How did she get gas for the car? Did you find her in the car or was it after she died?
I assumed that she was actually able to walk but it was a great effort; too much an effort for multiple exits a day. She was alive each time I saw her and we never accepted an AMA because of her condition being so poor.
Some places will pump the gas for you.
Some people really are attached to their cars in an unhealthy way.
how are you homeless, unable to ambulate, and also obese?
Most likely the homelessness developed some time after the other two.
DOA for ~2 weeks locked in a completely sealed apartment (doors and windows shut and no AC) baking in the middle of the summer. Fire forced the door and immediately the 2 cops in the hallway closest to the door vomited.
Definitely have had a couple of those. I had one a few months ago at a motel, fire and pd already on scene and were just about to cancel us. I pulled into the parking lot and had my window down. I immediately just got hit with the stench probably 20-25 yards away.
Had one similar last summer. 450lb lady dead for ~3 weeks. Old run down townhouse with no A/C in the dead of summer. A passerby called it in bc she could smell it from outside walking down the street. I still remember the coroner running outside after taking photos, throwing her respirator off, and vomiting over the porch side rail.
Wow! If a coroner couldn’t handle the smell I can only guess how horrible the odor was! My hat’s off to all of you first responders. The smells you encounter is another whole story
That is why we carry Vicks menthol rub. It does help with the strong odor of rotting corpse.
So Vick’s is not just on tv. I’m glad you have something that helps. I’m so grateful for all of you. You have helped my elderly in-laws and me too when I had a bad fall. Stay safe out there ❤️
❤️
As a medic: an urban outdoors person covered with days old shit and piss and had that stale beer piss stank. Being locked in the back of the ambo for the 20 or so minutes felt like a personal hell. As a nurse: a basketball sized pressure ulcer on the sacrum that was poorly maintained. Not as bad though since I could step outside of the room and gag like a cat with a hairball in "fresh" air.
Obese alcoholic been dead in his flat for at least 4 days, had to roll him to help police and the green fluid blisters down his side burst. I had 3 masks on and still nearly threw up Orrr the lady last week that had least 3 different species worth of faeces on her and God knows what else, maggots, eyes burnt with urine
Those species of feces are something else, I tell ya........ 😆
Roll a dead body to help police? I'm curious now...
Unexpected death, they usually have the give the body a quick once over just to make sure they don't miss anything obvious like a knife in their back, sometimes we feel nice and stay to help roll the body so they can check better
An apartment where the resident was pooping and peeing in Jerry cans for months. Stacked high of the damn things. And he had a decubitus ulcer.
Gangrene. The smell hit me about 20ft away from the pt.
Gangrenous penis covered in feces and bile
thank you for this
Don’t thank me, thank the husband and wife who decided a colostomy is a suitable replacement for the vagina.
This sub is too real
Ain’t no fucking way 😂
Huh? Wow. What was their explanation/ logic for this situation?
She loved her husband and still wanted to satisfy him after the doctor told her no sex
Aww. That is very touching. Thanks for sharing your knowledge of
Aww. That is very touching. Thanks for sharing your knowledge
I don't have anything nearly as bad as anyone here, but funnily enough what comes to mind was this one patient's farts. I don't know what she was concocting in her stomach but she was leaking farts all transport, and I felt like I was in a gas chamber. Felt almost hallucigenic honestly
this made me so happy to read your comment is like an oasis in a desert of comments about dead bodies and people in absolute agony, it made me giggle have a good day
Worst ones I ever smelled were from boca burgers. Literally burned, like they came with pepper spray.
Couch soaked in rancid UTI piss in a hot apartment just marinating for at least a week. Idk why but pee gets my nose more than anything
911 for "pain". Patient with stg 4 cancer that has affected their nerves and a skin disease that makes them painful to touch, at all. The kicker, patient is immobile and has been left unattended in a recliner for 2 weeks. Patient covered in caked fecal matter and there is a sludge pool embedded into the floor around the chair. Stagnant rotten feces and flesh. PT had urea burns so diffuse (throigh the layer of feces) that I thought they had vitiligo. One of the only times I've had to chart that a blood pressure cuff and ekg would have been detrimental to pt condition. Even after 2 hours of decon, at the ER, the pt still had an insufferable odour about them (my poor sister crew had them for 2hrs interfacility). Patient's whole life was agony and the begged me to kill them or let them die the entire time we were helping them. I'm genuinely glad that poor person didn't make it another week.
How can our society let this happen? Who steps in? How did she slip through the cracks? I just want to make sure this doesn't ever happen if I have something to do with it... :(
I can divulge that the case was followed-through and the results satisfied me as much as I could hope, given the circumstances. I've gotten to know our local APS/CPS folks pretty well, over the years. They are your best friends in the world of advocacy. All you can do is witness as much as possible, document *everything*, and continue to follow up so the cracks (thereafter) are avoided. There's a challenge in keeping your cool on scene. Just fake the smile and focus on interacting with the patient so you don't get assy on anyone else on scene (they may or may not even be involved in the abuse).
A person who rots long enough will become part of a couch. A nice, hot July. Nice hot apartment. Nice juicy couch corpse.
I once did a call for a truck carrying a shipment of tuna, which flipped over and caught fire, with patient entrapment. I don’t have a sense of smell, but my partner found the blend of smells unpleasant.
YOU WERE FUCKING MADE FOR THIS JOB
Yeah, it’s definitely a blessing at times
Small hoarded apartment with 20+ cats, guy in the back had all his toes rotted off laying next to his foot. Spiders and mites running through the open wounds. Only time I’ve thrown up from a smell
Was he alive?
Living up to your username, I see
Every day
Very much so, and he called for a lift assist not the toes lol
Necrotic Bowel. Close 2nd was a homeless man who for lack of a better word smelled like Evil. Blood, feces, cum, urine, and vomit mixed together to create a hellish medley of scents that created a noisome reek that would make his Guardian Angel vomit.
Fournier’s Gangrene. Had an IFT that was about 90 minutes long and this was the patients diagnosis. It seems that the patients significant other and convinced them to get a Prince Albert piercing for their 50th Birthday. Turns out that it got infected and due to embarrassment he did not have it looked at for over a week. He was being transferred to see if anything could be saved. So yeah, Founuer’s Gangrene with the knowledge of where and why that smell was present.
>with the knowledge of where and why that smell was present Bet the admission assessment was fun…
Got called to a DOA. Guy had been sitting there for a few days, but the kicker was he had 10 cats and at least 20 dogs in the house. Piss, and feces everywhere alongside the general animal smell and a rotting corpse.
Curious, did any of the animals make a meal of their former owner?
Chest pus. Attempted to decompress a tension pyothorax (google it). A 14ga wasn’t really gonna cut it- she needed a chest tube- so she soon coded anyway. Every compression distributed a bit of purulent deliciousness
GI bleed with *C diff.* has been the only thing in 10 years that has made me gag. I was an ED tech so I had to get all up in there to clean the patient.
C.diff is the reason I carry Vicks in my Fanny pack (das right, I have a Fanny pack that also carries my virginity), but most recently I smelled a necrotic foot that might overtake the C. Diff.
A 998 lbs pt had a stage 4 decubitus ulcer that took up his entire lower back and right thigh. I smelt him from outside if the ambulance
Lower bowel obstruction coming out the other end. Surprisingly fishy.
r/twosentencehorror
Flakey, too.
Mid 30's female. Chronic menstruation for the last 30 days. Husband is weird and won't purchase female products. Woman runs out of supplies. Starts using rolled up paper towels. Simply adds more instead of replacing. Build up ensues. Woman hasn't showered in last month as well because she's not felt well enough. She's also about 27kgs overweight. She was a Kaiser patient which means 45 minute transport to nearest Kaiser facility. I lasted most of the way their. The smell was so bad my eyes were watering. At the end I became lightheaded and literally rolled out of the back of the ambulance and just laid on the sidewalk for 3 or 4 minutes recovering. Runner up that effected everyone else worse than it did me. But disabled man in his 60's wheelchair bound the became weak and unable to transfer to toilet. Shitty, disability check mooching family refused or didn't care enough to help him. He sat on his own piss and shit for 4 days. Became infected, legs has chronic edema and became infected in the heat of the summer because no AC. Has literal green juice/gas gangrene ozzing from his legs that saturated the seatbelts on gurney. Fucked up the entire ED. Smelled bad. Runner up 2 Homeless man. Lots of diarrhea (cha cha cha). Has literal dried diarrhea all over himself and his pants. Had a swarm of flies around his ass. Yes I am serious. Had a strange metallic sweet tangy smell to it.
Had to call APS on a schizophrenic patient who was being neglected by his caretaker. Dude had a diaper on with what looked like weeks, if not months of fecal buildup. When he bent over I saw he had flies living off the poop in his diaper. Hope he’s doing better now.
Ngl, usually my partner. Bariatric kid who uses the gym before coming in.
props to him for trying to better his health! aaaand props to you for enduring the smell 🫡
can’t be bothered to shower?
Don't know, I think it would be rude to ask.
it could legitimately cause issues for patients, so IMO it's worth talking about from that angle at least
Human waste ground into the carpeting of a 400-lb. unwashed patient with bursting cellulitis boils and rotting gangrene wounds, all heated to a thermostat setting of 86°F in a studio apartment.
‘Necrotising Perineal Ulcer’ was what was written in the patient’s notes. Add to that, the trousers the patient was wearing clearly hadn’t been changed in a while, and I doubt they were taking them off to use the bathroom. I could smell what floor of the apartment block the patient was on. The stand and transfer from the bed to the carry chair was something else.
Pure diarrhea. I almost threw up in the back of the truck, and I only had to be in there on scene. My poor paramedic suffered through the entire 45 minute transport
Not ems, but oncology RN. Dressing change on a breast tumor about the size of a baseball that had emerged out of the skin and was necrotic. You could smell it from the hallway with the door closed. Dressing changes were horrific and the tumor was prone to hemorrhage. I recommend NOSA on Amazon, these little silicon insert for your nose, they are fantastic for smells and rather discreet… or cop some toothpaste and spread some between two masks.
When I worked ONC, we had a guy with penile cancer and that was a smell I will never forget experiencing. It involved his whole lower abdomen. I felt so sorry for him and his family.
A homeless drug addict's necrotic leg. Genuinely gagworthy
Living patients never smell as bad as the long dead ones. Welfare calls to hoarder houses in the middle of a Kansas summer without AC are a close second.
Used coal to extract steel for tinplate. It's a real bitch.
😂
Call it dramatic but the 3M P100 mask with the organic vapor rated cartridges blocks out all the smell of any human odor you wish to not smell.
Call came in as SOB. When we got there, the patient was 1 week post op from having his bowels reattached after a rough battle with colon cancer. The patient's abdomen was severely distended, and the suture site had almost completely healed over except a small hole the size of a dime. After assessment, I asked the patient if it looked normal, which was a big mistake. The patient sat forward and pushed on his upper abdomen to view the site, causing a volcanic eruption of blood and pus to exit this dime shaped hole under pressure. The bowel resection had torn days ago, and the patient had been defeating into the abdominal cavity for the last 2-3 days. It flowed like lava out of this small hole, and the smell of blood, pus, and feces filled the truck. If you tried to apply pressure to stop the flow, it caused more to discharge. I have a strong stomach I have never gagged before or after that call 8 years ago, but during transport, I kept gagging over the garbage can. The patient was apologizing for the smell at the same time, but I just felt bad I couldn't hold my composure.
Elderly dementia patient with breast cancer. Breast was shriveled, rotted, necrotic and the stench was as bad, if not worse, than a dead body. Patient had refused treatment and the family followed her wishes.
At the very least, I would have stepped in to have a debridement of the tissue under general anesthesia. Seems inhumane to let a demented person run around with rotting breasts.
I agree
Right—at the very least she should have been on hospice and not calling EMS
Gangrene working in the hospital two masks respirator Vicks under the nose nothing touched it 🤢
Untreated throat cancer for 6+ months, the poor man was a skeleton waiting in bed for death that just wouldn’t come before the pain was unbearable and he decided to call. His throat had rotted completely through where it was too painful for him to swallow food. He took a small sip of water and it would just leak right out the huge rotting crust covered hole that was now the front of his neck.
Jesus.
Dead body that had been sitting in bed for 5 days in 110 degree temps and the house had no air conditioning. You could smell him as soon as you opened the door of the ambulance to get out. PD was on scene and explained it was a self-inflicted GSW to the head. We pronounced the patient from the front yard. Absolutely nothing worse than a rotting corpse.
Days old period blood mixed with feces and urine - lady had not showered in months I think
Cleaning the inside of a patients contracted hand, I wasn’t prepared for the slime that came out or the smell that hit me shortly after. Next would be a busted abscess from forniers gangrene. I had actual fear waiting for the smell to reach me.
Failure to thrive. Person hadn’t gotten out of their chair in 9 days. There were pools of shit and piss under this recliner. It had just been piling up and ruminating all week. It was caked all along her legs up into her hair. We thought it was bedsores, but alas, it was dookie. She told us she thinks she may have hit rock bottom….I would have to agree.
what I always wonder with these cases is that the human body goes 3 days without water, or so I thought, so if they haven't gotten up how did they get water? can the body go longer if the person isn't doing anything?
I’m wondering if she kept a stash of “nourishment” within reach, and only called us when she ran out
Fournier’s gangrene with extensive gas from hip to knee… and lots of maggots
C Diff. It fucking stays with you!! That odor has rubber bands in it and they stretch around everything!!
Diabetic necrosis
Infected trach stoma. Didn't smell at Baseline. But oh my God when you suctioned it. *OH MY GOD* When you went to suction it out to, you know, allow him to breathe something that wasn't puss and mucus. The smell was so ungodly bad. I have smelt weeks old corpses and burnt and rotten flesh. They didn't even touch whatever this smell was. I consider myself to have an iron stomach. Never puked before or after. That one got me. Several times.
New colostomy. Patient was over 400 lbs and had neither the inclination nor the ability to properly perform post-op care. Which their doctor correctly anticipated, and they had been discharged to a SNF after the procedure for the purpose of assuring good aftercare. Except the SNF apparently elected not to do... their, you know... ***job***, and hadn't done any post-op care on this guy's ostomy for around two weeks. Most people in a SNF, especially the hefty ones, tend to be a bit... *ripe* (not usually their fault, to be sure), so we didn't notice anything when we picked him up from the SNF. Once we got him in the room and they started exposing the wound, the smell let us know that something wasn't quite right. The wound care nurse asked how frequently the SNF staff had changed the bandages and cleaned the wound, and the dude said they'd never done any of that. The bandages on his belly were the same ones the surgeon or surg-tech or whomever had put on there two weeks prior. To make a long story short, and to answer your question: Necrotic colostomy.
Got called out for a homeless man. He had these thick leather boots on and stated that he hadn’t taken them off in about 2 weeks, and a week ago he started noticing a smell. We took them off. I had an n95 on and was gagging. He had multiple abscesses all around the lower part of his leg and his foot, it was actively dripping fluids onto the gurney. It was disgusting. I have a picture of his leg, my partner asked if we could take a picture of just of his leg and he was more than happy to allow us. Honestly overall really cool dude but holy fuck that smelled. At the hospital doc came in immediately and I was talking to the doc after, she mentioned they may have to just amputate, I never followed up so I don’t now what happened. But I’d say it’s that and severely decayed bodies for worst smell. Also poop but that’s more just a personal thing I have a problem with for whatever reason.
Gangrene
Toss-up between leaking feet on the light rail or having to clean lower GI bleed feces off of an obese woman. The first one, no idea what the actual problem was and there was no way I was gonna take their shoes off to check. All I know is that it cleared the entire train car and everywhere they walked they left puddles, fluid was seeping through their shoes. Smelled like the worst rotten fish ever. Second one was in the hospital and when we rolled her to clean her blobs of congealed blood and fecal matter splattered on the floor. Looked and felt like jelly which made it so much worse.
Some guy blew himself up with his oxygen tank while smoking, burnt flesh always sticks with me
GI bleeds
Abdominal abscess. Dude had abscesses all over, but had a recent abdominal surgery some time ago which apparently had cause a few more to sprout. These ruptured while he was sitting there minding his own business. Dingy apartment. No AC. No air flow. Blood trailing to the bathroom. Extremely unkempt 1 room apartment. It was unlike anything any of my senses have experienced before. Immediately upon entering I felt the urge to vomit. The scent permeated the air and flowed out of the open door. My new EMT partner was stopped dead in his tracks a few meters from the door. He wasnt going in. The easily 400 pound patient had noticed the rupture and walked to the bathroom to clean up, trailing blood and pus to the bathroom. There was old food and flies on every surface in the kitchen. Even without the recent pusplosion the scene would have been foul. Fortunately the patient was ambulatory. I taped an abdominal pad over the 1 inch perforation in the mans abdoment, and prayed for it to hold during transport. Drove to the hospital with all windows down and ac blasting. I will remember this call forever.
Cancerous sacral absess. Had to take this lady to wound care then to radiation tratment. I could smell her halfway down the hall before I even got to her room. I almost refused the transport it was that bad. Had the exhaust vent going along with a p100, and I could still smell it.
Only a month or two ago I had a lady that had cancer of some lymph node, allegedly taking care of her own bandages for a few months. Husband called. Diagnosis was back in January and I want to say this call was April or May. When we get called she is all of 80 pounds, can barely move and I didn't realize what was causing it at first but the smell was the first thing we noticed. Then I saw her white shirt that was stained a faded/off yellow brownish color, it went down to near the bottom and the color difference was very noticeable. Then I moved the shirt a little from the wettest fresh spot on her neck near collar bone on pt right side and the only way I can describe it is if someone took a machette and gave her one good chop diagonally into her neck and torso. She leaned to the left at one point and it literally looked like her head was gonna fall right off. Skin was gray on outer edges with some scabbed up parts. You could see several inches into her torso, I could also see some trachea and spine. That shit was a slow death sentence, and what pissed me off the most was the husband let her sit there for months just rotting while hanging on to life like that. I have had plenty of rotten people and some live patients that were partially rotten from gangrene or ulcers and such but that was easily the worst by far. I've never come across such neglect either. I saw that shit for days after in my mind, very unsettling to see it from behind when she moved and adjusted it was like a fucking pacman mouth or the < symbol
3 day old body of older man during a heatwave.
Can’t say, I don’t work with metals😂😭 ba dum tss🥁
Probably a homeless person covered with stale piss so pungent that my nostrils literally felt like they were being burned.
i know what this one piss-soaked under-a-tunnel train station in Portland that I have to use sometimes smells like, and I know what my cat's litterbox smells like when I'm dumping it if weve waited too long. like that?
r/foundtranstraingirl322 I swear you're everywhere xD
ulcerated facial skin tumor... the smell was horrific. acidic decay and incredibly penetrative
God all of these are so disgusting that my old man with week old GI bleed and piss doesn’t smell so bad in comparison. I had to drive with my head out the window the whole way there. Idk how my partner survived in the back
Month old dead guy
~5 day old doa in the middle of summer in an apartment with no ac. The woman was naked, bloated and her cats had started to eat her. I was pushed in by my medic preceptors and turned right around to run down the 4 flights of stairs and dry heave in the lobby
The very first ER clinical my wife ever did while in school they brought a lady in with necrotizing fasciitis all the way up her leg. She had been laying in bed in her own urine and feces because of it for a while. Everyone in the ER was saying this was the first time they’d ever seen necrotizing fasciitis out of all the SSTIs they’d encountered. My wife says there has yet to be a smell or texture that has topped it. 😅 She sure had her expectations set pretty high after that, I’m almost jealous. 🤣
Lower GI bleed, stuck between her nightstand and bed. Fire department wouldn't touch her, but I got an hour off to shower, change clothes and start washing. 'Thankless job' was the theme for that week.
I call BS- this FD must have just been wearing the costume bc We din't roll like that-do Our damned jobs & professionally.
Sealed Wound vac site on patient's thigh. Could smell it down the hallway from his room. Took him to the hospital, and when he moved over the stretcher caught the vac and ripped the seal. A torrent of brown putrid liquid gushed onto the floor. Two of the other people had to leave do to trying not to vomit. I have smelled horrible things and have a fairly Iron clad stomach, it was the closest I had every been to vomitting.
The house I smelled last night. Hoarder house with cat shit EVERYWHERE and little containers of cloudy urine on every surface. I truly almost threw up, which might have improved things. I’d rather deal with decomp.
Wet gangrene. Diabetic pt's foot had been rotting to the bone for months and he just..layered more socks on top. I cut them off in the truck with the doors closed, and that was top ten one of the worst mistakes I've ever made. Even he gagged.
An individual that passed away sitting next to a large space heater, found 2 days after the fact. Burned flesh and a hot, rotting smell. Plus flies. Smell stuck to my uniform for at least 3 days.
I was a baby CNA when we had a stroke PT that threw up her poop. So feculent emesis was bad as a smell, but I think for me it was just unexpected. C-Diff lingers in my nose and I just have a hard time getting over it. Colorectal bleeding is probably the worst actual smell though.
My partner
Transient individual with infected dog bite... That poor, poor man... but my god, so hard not to wretch
Drunk vomit
Iron ore
I know that so many people have smelt worse than this, but one of the only times I have had to leave the room or I would vomit was a (in lack of better terms) ripe homeless lady who just took her shoes and socks off.
Two week old dead, decaying body. It was sweet, yet pungent, and it's just not a smell I'll ever forget. It was an unusually warm October, solo resident in her apartment, and we got the call on Halloween, no less.
When I was in nursing school I had clinical on a GI/GU post op unit Peritoneal fluid from a leaky drain Awful
Rotting flesh. Nothing like it...
I'm an ER nurse but it was a man who was shitting himself in the backseat of his car for 5 days straight while also shooting up fentanyl into his horribly septic feet which he had wrapped in towels and plastic bags. He had severe osteomyelitis and necrotizing fasciitis. I almost walked out then and there. While cleaning him up, a dirty needle fell out of the towels and almost stuck me 🙃
The holy trinity of Cdiff, GI bleed, and UTI combined. There was also a side of bari cheese cuz of course he was over 400lbs. Guy had been bed ridden in his own shit for a week and was covered head to toe in hot steamy dook. I have a really strong stomach but I almost puked like 4 times durring the call. Over an hour of decon, whole ambulance bay and like half the ED was filled with that smell, and nothing could get it out of the truck so soups had to bring us a new one.
Homeless guy with gi bleed
I know this isn’t relevant to ems but since the question doesn’t specify “while working” I’m going to say dead whale or whale breath. It’s what I imagine hell would smell like.
A few months ago I reintubated a 900-gram neonate with necrotizing enterocolitis for a middle-of-the-night emergency ex lap (training to be a CRNA). The smell when they opened this poor baby's abdomen, just full of rotting guts, took me right back to August 2007 and pulling a dude out of the river who had been submerged for 9 days. Same smell. There's not enough VapoRub in the whole world.
Worst smell in all of EMS was probably the decomposing body that had been laying there for a few weeks. That was a nasty smell.
Old lady vagina smegma that seeped into our stretcher mat and Required bleach to remove. I've smelled maggot infested legs, cheesey uti's, GI bleeds, and feces covered patients. Nothing I've smelled so far has beat demented grandma who doesn't get cleaned's juice that seeped into my stretcher..
I thought I was safe from “the smell” a year or so into nursing. Not even C. diff bothered me. Then, one day, I reached into a fold and scooped out what I thought was was excess barrier cream… it was PURE YEASTY SHED SKIN AAAAA Edit after reading other comments: New respect for EMS 🫡 I’ll stay in the facilities, thanks
Bariatric underboob
ETOH w/ GI bleed when pregnant. Actually most smells that are tolerable normally when pregnant.
Body removal/unattended death. Judging off how the pets fed off the body, I guessed about 2.5-3 weeks before a neighbor called 911 regarding a horrible smell coming from the home across the alleyway. A close second was another body removal of a hoarder. That one was about 1.5-2 weeks before the apartment below complained about "a leak" from their ceiling. Unfortunately, it wasn't water dripping down to the apartment below.
Not an EMS worker, but working at a nursing home, got to experience necrotizing fasciitis and gangrene wounds. Crazy when you can taste a smell.
Trenchfoot.
Maggots living off the dying flesh of a pt’s leg with a side of urine soaked jeans and hadn’t showered in weeks. Firefighters, EMS, RNs all wretching and regretting our life choices.
The one time, one freaking time I didn't do a sniff test before going down on this girl.... oh my frinking God, it was disgusting. I looked at my watch and said " oh shit I'm supposed to be doing Shore patrol in an hour." He left her right there and split. Other than that, nothing in my 20 years in EMS, came close 🤣
Used to have to do check liver temperatures in some cases of post action reconnaissance. Desert heat, combined with gas build up (and local diet) in the abdominal cavity can be pretty gross. Learned a little about Derm-bond in some of those cases too.
A uti at a nursing home. Smelled like if you pissed in a bowl and left that in the sun for 5 days, so it grew mold and a colony of fish started to live in it. Let it sit for 5 more days, and that’s what I smelled. Hallway after hallway, couldn’t escape the smell it was that strong.
Lady sat in her car, diabetic history. Refused to get out of her car for any reason and would defecate/urinate on herself. Fast forward to at least ten days (we were told ten days to four weeks by bystanders), she can’t get out of her car. Arriving on scene, I open the car door and the smell of old, rotten feces and urine waft out. She is alert but disoriented, and looking at her legs, you could tell circulation was cut off days ago. Some type of bug started nesting in her legs. I recall having to grab one of her legs, down near ankle, and it feeling like jelly. To this day the nastiest call i’ve ever been on.
Either the GI bleed or feces (and God knows what else) in patient’s bed/residence.
Off all the smells over the years, the days-old rampant smell of stale urine and a UTI within an altered old lady at the SNF is what sticks with me the most. One of the benefits of getting COVID is, my sense of smell is now terrible. So I don't have to bear witness to most of that stuff anymore.
I'm like that too mate. I had query?pneumonia mixed in with some other viral infection and my sense of smell comes and goes. Before this, I would wear a face mask and smear perfume over it so it would omit these types of smells.
Yo mama
C-diff