[HN Gopher] Scents and memories at the hospital (2019)
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Scents and memories at the hospital (2019)
Author : davikr
Score : 37 points
Date : 2024-06-02 11:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (scopeblog.stanford.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (scopeblog.stanford.edu)
| zabzonk wrote:
| from my memories, i can recommend gauze with embedded rotting
| flesh from a gangrenous wound. we used to get one or two of these
| a year at the microbiology lab i worked in, and there were few
| volunteers to open the container. exploding stool containers,
| packed full up with shit and then left in sunlight for several
| hours were another non-favourite.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I've had to send in stool samples several times for various
| reasons, and every time I imagined some poor lab tech having to
| handle it. Too bad they never did a "Dirty Jobs" episode about
| that profession.
| zabzonk wrote:
| actually, it was really easy to send in a simple to deal
| with. the NHS used a stool sample container that had a little
| spoon attached to the top (whole container is about 4 inches
| long and 1.5 wide, spoon about big enough to hold a pea) -
| procedure:
|
| - crap, but catch some on toilet paper
|
| - scoop some with little spoon - tests need almost nothing
|
| - send off to lab
|
| it was astounding how few samples we got, even from
| hospitals, that managed this.
| adolph wrote:
| "catch some on toilet paper"
|
| Have you ever tried to catch something behind yourself, or
| under yourself in a high squatting position? Something your
| body has some deep learning about not touching? Seems like
| labs would get a better response with putting some used TP
| in a bag.
| zabzonk wrote:
| have you ever wiped your bum?
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> it was astounding how few samples we got, even from
| hospitals, that managed this.
|
| Yeah, I'll tell you why. I was asked for a stool sample
| once (don't ask). I looked at that tiny perspex cylinder
| with the tiny little fairy spoon in it and it was
| immediately obvious: nuh-huh. No way. I'm not handing my
| shit in a tube to some poor health person. Nope. No. Never.
| No way.
|
| TFE: Too Fucking Embarassing!
|
| You medical people have to think harder about all the
| things you ask your patients to do. Colonoscopies? Specula?
| Prostate exams? Shoving a rod up your nostrils to get
| samples for Covid? Come on. The human body is not just a
| machine. There's a little person inside that feels every
| single thing.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Bless you, all who are in the medical profession. It's hard work,
| and at least here in the US it's made even harder by
| understaffing, brutal work hours, and getting pulled around by
| big business interests. Everyone from janitor to EMT to
| phelobotomist to anesthesiologist: you have my deep and sincere
| gratitude. May you have the strength to keep doing what you're
| doing.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Let's make sure to exclude the business people that make the
| health system more and more inhumane for workers and patients
| in search of ever growing profits.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Very much so.
| chevman wrote:
| One of my core memories was standing in an elevator in college,
| deep in to my second or third LSD trip.
|
| My friend handed me a tin of Japanese green tea, which I opened
| slowly and then inhaled very intentionally.
|
| It instantly transported me back to being 14 and in Japan for the
| first time. Will always remember that feeling of smells blending
| with nostalgia, adventure and discovery. :)
| lainga wrote:
| There is a certain type of tea that my mom would give me every
| time I came home from college, and I refuse to even try
| drinking it anywhere else
| vanc_cefepime wrote:
| In primary care, I used to smell sinus infections/strep as a
| patient walked in the room for their "sick visit" and felt
| confident enough to diagnose without swabbing but I still swabbed
| anyway to avoid antibiotics for viral infections. I've long left
| primary care for hospital and concierge medicine so now c diff
| stool and melena get me usually.
|
| There was this one time in residency I had a tiny older lady from
| a very rural town come in with a festering breast wound. One
| breast was normal sized and the other was 4x size of the normal
| one. Almost the size of a medium watermelon. Turns out it was
| necrotizing breast cancer and severe cellulitis. She didn't
| recall much about why it took her this long to seek help. Her
| kids pleaded her to get it checked out but she had a deep
| mistrust of healthcare workers it wasn't until the smell was
| unbearable for her family that they brought her in. The whole ED
| smelled of rotten infected flesh and no amount of winter fresh
| and peppermint oil was able to help the smell. That was about 10
| years ago and I still remember that day and smell.
| gg1993 wrote:
| Do you still have this knack of smell or did it develop into
| something else? I spent a lot of time in the hospital growing
| up because of my brothers being admitted and stuff so I used to
| people watch often and got pretty good at just being able to
| see someone and guesstimate what they have/needed to be treated
| for.
| tbihl wrote:
| He probably learned it. When I worked at one, I used to be
| able to smell what power a nuclear reactor had been operating
| at.
| Zenzero wrote:
| There are just distinct smells you start to pick up on as you
| treat a variety of illnesses. There is no superpower to it.
| Scents tend to form a long memory, so if you catch a good
| whiff of a suppurative exudate you'll never forget it. For
| many of us we probably pick up on some VOCs emitted by
| various bacteria and it can give us the strong intuition the
| poster above describes.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| As a paramedic, have dealt with the same thing, patients with
| obvious severe infections (TMI for people with sensitive
| stomachs - the worst being an older lady who spent her days in
| a recliner, and had 'bed' sores on her legs as a result,
| couldn't get up because of the pain, so had defecated herself,
| which had melted due to body heat and run down her legs into
| the bed sores) but was still resistant to going to hospital.
| Irony was, she was a founding part of our fire department many
| many years ago. "Ma'am, if you don't come with us, the next
| time we'll be here is quite possibly because you'll die right
| in this recliner".
|
| She didn't come with us that night, so we cleaned her up, as
| best we could, and came back the next morning after having done
| some outreach (our department had a pastor who knew her and was
| also a PA and responder), and were able to convince her to go.
|
| I'll never forget that smell.
|
| You can do things like putting icy-hot or ben gay ointment on
| your upper lip. Unpleasant sensation and smell, and doesn't
| fully work, but ... it helps.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| My cat threw up three times in just over 24 hours. I was not
| best pleased.
|
| So, thank you,. I now have a needed dose of perspective.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| This is from a doctor's point of view on the front lines.
|
| For the rest of us when we walk in the door, it's the bouquet of
| delicate notes above the isopropyl alcohol, sometimes with a very
| complex finish that can be impossible to forget.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I've suffered some pretty severe mistreatment in a hospital
| setting before, and there's a certain cleaning chemical that's
| commonly used in hospitals that absolutely sets my teeth on edge.
| It's wild how a scent can not only trigger a memory but a flood
| of emotions to go with it.
| sethammons wrote:
| 20 years ago, my marketing professor was talking about scent
| being the sense most strongly linked with memories. The smell of
| exhaust taking him back to his country of origin. Sticking with
| medical smells, my sister can smell bladder cancer. Not sure how
| common that is, but she used to work in urology and after a urine
| sample was turned in, she could tell ahead of time who was sick.
|
| I imagine that smell has helped shape how we find food and avoid
| disease and has been reinforced since some long ago ancestor
| likely common to many mammals or even further back. We often
| think of dogs or bears for their well developed sense of smell or
| even sharks sensing blood in the water.
|
| Fun fact: humans are more sensitive to the smell of petrichor
| (fresh rain on dry ground) than sharks are to blood.
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