Stank You Very Much

so, there are different smells that the human body is capable of producing. ABB over at asystole had a post about this a while back, so i thought i'd throw in my two cents.

patients stink. they all have their own 'brand' of stink. lets try to catalog them, shall we?

neuro patients.

they stinky. probably my least favorite, hands down. i don't really know how Head Nurse does it, but i can't STAND neuro patients at all. neuro patients get this sort of musky dank smell, that's kinda hard to describe. but if you have ever stood in at the bedside of someone who's had their brain messed with, you'd know.

while we're on the subject of neuro patients, let me also add that i don't like them because you can't knock'em out. generally, you have to do all kinds of neuro checks every hour or four hours or 15 minutes to make sure they're not getting worse.......which means no propofol. my favorite patients-the kinds that are sleeping. and not stinky.

fearful patients.

you know how they say that dogs can smell fear? i think ICU nurses can too. i've had patients from stroke to PE to heart attack patients and i can just tell they're FREAKIN' out. part of my nursing care when i clue in on this is reassurance (as much as possible, i prefer the pessimistic approach, mostly), but the other thing i clue in on is fear smell. your body must just put out this universal scent of fear, or it may just be the smell of the catecholamine surge and the adrenalin leaking out your body that puts out this smell. really pervades the room. not too bad. nothing a little peppermint essential oil in a plastic 30 ml medicine cup can't fix. i just put it in the room, i don't make my patient swallow it or anything, in case you were wondering. soooooooooo glad our pharmacy stocks that.

GI bleed.

probably other peoples least favorite. but i actually don't mind it that much. don't get me wrong, it's bad, i'm not about to market it as aftershave or anything, but it's tolerable to me. smells kinda like horse poop, but worse, and without that fresh minty alfalfa aftertaste. the worst part about these patients is just that you're in there every hour changing smelly poop. that can get old real fast. and skinny easy-to-turn people never really have GI bleeds. course, now most of the patients come from the heavyweight division anyways.......

Smoky Wino.

when you have consumed sooooo much alcohol and nicotine in your life that being scrubbed with hibicleanse, dial anti-bacterial soap, mouthwash, betadine and johnson& johnson's baby shampoo doesn't help, it may be time to lay offa that bottle of booze and that pack o'cigs. my facility has a policy that if you are on a vent, you get bathed at night, otherwise, day shift does the bath. but really, bathing is a PRN thing. if you stinky, get bathed. especially if i have to be in the room all night, smelling your funk, i'm gonna wash you. for my sake as much as yours. the nice thing about these patients is that usually they have family members that smell just as good as the patients.........

The Neglected

i had this patient once, back in the day when i was an aide, that had had a syncopal episode whilst standing to pee. he wakes up in the morning, goes into the john first thing in the morning like he has for the last 40 years, and passes out. smacked the crap outta his face, ribs, shoulders, he was a mess. the whole side of his face was black and blue, plus that side of his body. guy was a mess otherwise too. i mean, he had this gnarly beard thing going, if he had an ackshual bird come outta that thing i wouldn't have been surprised. his toenails hadn't been cut in ages, and smelled ne-glec-ted. i thought that the guy MUST have been homeless or something, right? surprise surprise, the family comes in, and they're NORMAL. like, they smell great, have clean clothes,.....it was weird. if you live with your dad/spouse, what the freak are you doing letting him be so stinky?!?!? you dress nicely, shower daily, look normal, and allow your dad/spouse to look like Ted Kasinscki living in that cabin in montana??? it was so, so, so weird man. these people i feel bad for, cuz they came in stinky and they probably don't even know they smell.

Aunt Flo

i might catch some flack for this one, but please bear in mind that i am an alternate gendered nurse, as Cartoon Characters likes to call me. but i ackshully have a question; if i have a patient that is, um.....enjoying a visit from Aunt Flo, what can I do to help them out? do i walk in and offer to help 'clean' them up? send in a female coworker? what would be the least awkward/embarrassing for me and the patient? any advice would be greatly appreciated.

any i missed?