one of the most practical assets of being armed with this giganormous Jackie Chan nose of mine (other than to headbutt irritating citizens of Singapore on the trains who refuse to give way when people are trying to get off, nose first of course) is that i'm almost always able to pick up the most distinct of odours. this ability is of course most poignant in the hospital where the sick and the destitute primarily exist. the production of smells is further amplified by the fact that most of these individuals are really not that well to begin with. and funky odours coming from the human body is its way of saying 'Oi! seek help! seek medical attention! go to the fragrance department!' the same could of course be said for bad BO and halitosis uncovered by beauty products.

the wide variety of smells in the hospital is perhaps one of the reasons why i like being in the hospital so much. i have to admit that i have this obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive-compulsive desire to smell every single fluid and solid that comes out from the human body. in a single night of working in the hospital alone, thoughts like 'Hey! this is the smell of Mr. Chan's shit!' and 'Oooh! Gangrene!' waft across my head, the same way those odours are doing so in my nostrils. i can't pinpoint an exact reason as to why i love smelling funky odours other than perhaps just professional interest. of course, it could also be an undesirable fetish of sorts. but that's just plain gross.

some of these smells have become so distinct or second-natured to me, that sometimes, they become rather indescribable. you just know that odour comes from (insert random producer of foul smell) when you inhale it. i mean, it's easy to describe the smell of shit and piss. but how do you go about describing the smell of shit laced with blood? or piss from a patient on Penicillin? or even the smell of gastric contents? some things in life are simply just better experienced first hand. you know what they say about pictures speaking a thousand words. but with smells, they mostly just render you at a loss for words.

none the less, i have decided to compile a list of the various smells that i commonly come in contact with on a routine shift in the hospital. not all of them are body fluids of course. because you can only derive so much fun from shit, piss and gastric juice. so for starters, let's go with....


1) Septanol - is that vodka? oh wait, it's just medical disinfectant.
i'm a clean freak. i have this bad habit of needing to pack up the nurses' station and treatment room before i commence with work proper. and believe you me, the hospital is one hell of a dirty place to be at. from hospital acquired infections to the various ailments that the patients come in for, 'clean' is the last word a hospital should ever endorse. we're looking more at 'hygienic'. and at risk of sounding like a Dettol advert, i have to admit that there's nothing more pleasant-smelling and trustworthy than the many bottles of Septanol that one can find in the hospital. it's blue, it's made up of 70% methylated spirit and most interestingly it smells strangely like vodka. every time i clean up the treatment room, i can imagine drunk little gaseous atoms knocking against each other, and well.... just generally knocking each other up. how can i not love a medical disinfectant that kills germs and reminds me of clubbing at the same time?


2) General Anaesthetic - the common cure for halitosis
halitosis (or in layman's terms, bad breath) can be quite a distressing experience for the average Joe. but hey, i think i might have just discovered a simple cure for the typical attack of halitosis. you see, i once had a patient who admitted for the simple hernia mesh repair. he was genuinely nice and really courteous and all. the only weird thing he kept doing was to cover his mouth when he spoke to all the nurses. it was only when he had to sign some formal documents and speak to me at the same time when i realize why he kept on with this idiosyncrasy. his mouth apparently, emitted this really foul stench, strangely resemblant of a dish of all the strangest foods in the world fermented together in a great big melting pot. and one could tell that he must have lived with it for quite a long time and was really embarrassed about it. i felt kinda bad for him actually, because he was considerate enough to want others to avoid smelling it by constantly covering his mouth.

post-operatively though, he seemed like a changed man. for one, he was conversing with me without the hindrance of an appendage muffling his speech. the foul stench was gone apparently. and the dear patient could definitely feel it. instead of the vile concoction of fermented foods, the pleasant staple smell of medical disinfectant and anaesthetic coloured his speech. there was this confidence in him that made one feel warm and snuggly inside. so i say, if you've got a case of bad breath, don't panic. go for surgery under GA. tell your local GP, 'i want my ear piercing during under surgery, and make sure it's under local anaesthetic!' do this while covering your mouth please.


3) Vomit (part one) - is that the smell of the Ministry of S... blueragrhhhh!!!
vomiting is the body's way of saying (actually more like screaming and shouting) 'i've had enough alcohol for the night! put in some more and i'll morbidly embarrass you!'. and throughout my entire nursing career, i've received only two such patients in my general surgery settings. of course, in my entire clubbing experience, they're a dime a dozen. me, included. there's nothing that feels better than vomiting after a night of heavy drinking. of course, that's not the point. the point is that the distinctive smell of Absolut and vomit permeates the air when such patients are around. i remember one such overflow patient, a case from the Department of Internal Medicine.

she was morbidly obese, on top of already being morbidly embarrassing to herself. she came into the ward straight from the Emergency Department, drunk and incoherent. she wanted to pee, but couldn't even walk to the toilet. she was vomiting like there was no tomorrow. and before you knew it, she soon fell asleep with her legs with her legs spread-eagled, black lacey panties for all to see. around her were puddles of pee, vomit and patients with looks of disgust. this is a typical case of people drinking too much on their first ever night out in the clubs.

the next day, the whole ward smelt like a club on Sunday morning.


4) Milky Milky Stools - it smells like funky strawberries (which makes a good name for an ice-cream flavour)
i've generally found dietitians to be the prim and proper ladies of the hospital. they are almost always slim and petite. they wear nice clothes and walk around in pumps or clickety-clackety heels. i mean a plus-sized dietitian wouldn't really reflect well on the profession, would it? of course, the dietitians can afford to dress up like they are partying in the wards, not only because they are beautiful and live by a balanced diet, but also, they are simply not involved with the nursing side of things. what nursing side of things you say? cleaning up stools, cleaning up vomit, cleaning up everything that causes an unpleasant smell generally.

dietitians are generally called in when a patient is not taking food well. perhaps they don't have an appetite or perhaps they just need that extra nutrition to supplement their diet. one of the most common tools for helping these malnourished patients to put on weight would be that of Ensure. in case you're not from the health-care profession, Ensure is a brand of well-balanced and nutritious milk feeds. it comes in strawberry, vanilla and chocolate flavours. the staple orders in my ward are tragically, strawberry. Ensure can be a real boon or a bane, depending on the patient's gastric tolerance for dairy products. the worst professional bomb that a dietitian can throw to the nurses is a simple order of Ensure 6 cans/day for a patient who has just recently started taking soft foods. and you know what milk does to the lactose-intolerant and people who were recently re-introduced to solid foods. they shit all six cans of milk out like their bodies were simply no more than a catalyst of sorts.

this is why i've become so familiar to the scent of shit mixed with strawberry milk. Ensure-based shit is a creamy and thick pasty kind. the closest resemblance in terms of consistency and colour i can think of is Japanese curry. and boy, do i love Japanese curry.


5) Bloodied stools - the smell of the Industrial Revolution
people can shit bloody stools for all sorts of reasons. from a tear in the stomach lining to putting phallic-shaped objects up their orifices WITHOUT the aid of a lubricant. my ward, being general surgery and all, commonly receives cases of the former, the bleeding gastrointestinal tract cases. we call them BGITs for short. sometimes they have stomach cancer which causes them to bleed and bleed and bleed. other times they are simply no more than ulcers in the stomachs. the more serious cases have their haemoglobin levels ranging in the 6 and 7s (Haemoglobin levels above 9 or 10 are generally considered to be quite okay). they often require a massive amount of blood transfusions to replace the losses. the worst is when the blood goes in, simply to come out from the anus again. and blood-stained stools are the most worrisome kind. they don't smell as unpleasant as your typical stools, often bordering on the odour of metals or coal. but like i said, they make you worry a lot for the lives of your patients.


6) Menses - the fisherman's wharf
one of the things that you'll come to accept as a male nurse is the fact that you will have to get changed in a unisex toilet. or at least in my hospital, i'm always changing and doing my ablutions in a unisex toilet. i remember the first time as a student nurse when i used the staff unisex toilet, the distinct smell of fish was wafting through the air. that was the day when i added the Sanitary Dustbin into my list of things that one will commonly find in the toilet.

Pangkeng and I are always screaming and complaining about the women in our ward who pee and dirty the toilet seats with their menstrual fluid. our idea is that if the women can moan about the men who don't put down the toilet seats after use, then the men also have the right to retaliate with stained toilet seats. and believe me, it's a very nauseating scent when left in the toilet for an extensive period of time in a country like Singapore. and you know what's the crowning glory of it all? i'm supposedly put in charge of maintaining the cleanliness of the toilets. of course, the janitor does a very good job of cleaning up the majority of the stains. but within an hour, the toilet always smells like a trip to the fish market. and i'm not saying it's fish just because all the men think it's fish. it really smells like fish.


7) Vomit (part-two) - I know what you had last dinner....
another common ailment that our ward accepts is the case of intestinal obstruction, or I/O for short. we get a lot of I/Os over the festive seasons, whereby the locals stuff themselves to death at buffets and gatherings. and when your body is stuffed, the best way of expulsion is either through vomiting or if your body processes things fast, defecating. for those who are admitted into the hospital, we insert a tube down their nostril that goes straight into the stomach. and then we suck out the gastric contents of what they had during dinner. there will be a drip running at the same time in case we suck out too much and they get malnourished and faint. we call this procedure the 'drip and suck'. this always initiates laughs between Pangkeng and me.

but what gets more laughs between the two of us is when we try to identify the food products the patients have had previously before admission into hospital. the common things we have smelt before are tom yam soup, chicken broth and being resident alcoholic drinkers in the ward, red wine. we always make it game. once we've smelt the item at hand, we'll lay a cigarette bet of one or two sticks. then someone will proceed to ask the patient what he had for dinner. i normally win when it comes to the wine. Pangkeng being the big eater wins the food portions.


being exposed to these smells in the hospital have made me practically immune to the worst of smells. i have smelt rot and death before. the rubbish truck loaded with yesteryear's foods can drive past me but i wouldn't even flinch. perhaps this is why i love working in the hospital so much. it's practically an adventure of smells for me.