Super Nose

You have probably heard about or if you are a Mom experienced the heightened sense of smell that comes with pregnancy. But this is a little ridiculous. I have come to call it "super nose." Brian calls it my lame super power. And let me tell you that it is not an advantage in a hospital. Here are a few examples.

Two or three weeks ago I was seeing a consult in the emergency department. The guy was telling me his story. I was standing next to his bed about at his waist level. He put is arm behind his head while he was talking and I almost retched. I quickly faked a page and ran out of the room. It took me 2 or 3 fake pages to finish that interview and exam. I'm sure that guy probably did not even smell that bad.

I was walking in the basement last week with a friend of mine- it is a short cut I often take. We passed by the dirty laundry and then by the clean. Usually the whole hallway smells like the clean laundry- which smells like wet-n-wild in the summer (kinda steamy and chlorine-like). But on this day we rounded the corner and I was hit by a wall of bad/dirty laundry smell. I was complaining about the smell when my friend started to laugh at me. He said that it was a good 8 feet before he could smell what I was talking about.

Today super nose developed a new skill- diagnosis. I've actually started to diagnose random people (not patients) with things based on smell. I became convinced on that this secretary lady at work had paniculitis (skin infection of the fat rolls) because of the way she smelled. It was not a good smell.

Super nose is an interesting part of this pregnancy adventure. It is usually pretty mundane- like me insisting that the garbage be taken out immediately or opening all the windows even when it's cold. But at work it runs a muck a bit. No matter where the bad smell is, I keep getting this movie clip running through my head. It's the ogre/monster guy from the 80s movie Labrynth- I looked it up his name was Ludo. They are at the bog of eternal stench and all he can say is "Smells Bad." It really says it all and it helps me laugh at the bad smells a little more.