This is probably pretty mild compared to some but one time a potato found its way out of its place and hid in the farthest depths of our pantry. The smell was terrible. When we found it, it was the saddest looking potato on record
I know this is silly but when I was pregnant with my 3rd I had the worst all day sickness ever. Well my husband was cooking salmon one night, the only thing I could bare at the time, and when one of the pieces hit the pan, it was the most horrifying stinky fish smell of my life… I refused to go back in until every ounce of that stink was gone… I still, to this day, gag at the tiniest thought of salmon.
Cleaning out a basement months after a flood, homeowner didn’t have good insurance so they left it. Dead animals, unplugged freezer with meat, and mould, all dumped on the floor and soaked in filth water.
I was proctoring a test and this kid threw up all over himself. Whatever was in his stomach was not of this world. I still smell it when I think about it.
Let me tell you the story of the worst fart I have ever smelled.
When I was 14, I attended an upscale reform school. I was one of a few kids whose tuition was paid for by a scholarship, and I didn’t have rich parents. However, there was kid named Jack who was from a very well to do family, I’m talking a summer home on Lake Como well to do.
One night a group of students (including myself and Jack) were hanging out in the dorms. I don’t remember who was talking about what, but Jack farted and the conversation fell silent and was replaced with screams of “ewww!” and “gross!”.
After a couple of seconds, the reactions turned to gagging as we all began to smell the most foul odor to ever have emanated from a human body. It was like a sulphur egg fart that had been trapped in his colon for several years, marinating in a toxic stew of shit gravy. It made my eyes water like mustard gas.
We all got up and ran for the door, and once outside, we made it about twenty feet before two staff members stopped us in our tracks, and demanded to know what we were freaking out about.
Before they finished their question, they started sniffing the air, and said “What the fuck is that?”. I tried explaining that it was Jack’s fart following us from the room, and that we were running from it like it was a fucking ghost, but they refused to believe that smell could’ve been produced by a person. Those of us who survived the events of the night collectively came to refer to his fart as “J-force one”.
I’ve come to hypothesize that the odor was the result of years of eating nothing but foie gras, caviar, and fancy cheese. He had the digestive system of a 12-year-old noble child living in Vienna in the 16th century. He was covered in an oily sheen that I can only assume was his body desperately trying to purge all the truffle oil he’s consumed throughout his life via the sweat glands.
The way some severe alcoholics smell, kind of like a mix of sweet pickles and rotten potatoes. Strange that this happens to some and not others, for some reason.
A grease trap being emptied behind an ethiopian restaurant I built a wheelchair ramp for. Just god awful
This one dude who used to ride in the nighttime ride service I worked at while in college, smelled like a combination of BO, unwiped ass, cigarettes, and curry spices. We called him captain stinky pants, and it usually took anywhere between 15 min and an hour for the smell to leave the van, and that’s WITH the windows open. Febreeze helped
I’ve been around decaying animals, been to landfills on humid days…but my beagle came into my gaming room one night, ripped ass, and walked out…and I swear to high holy christ it reeked like both of those things combined with Bigfoot’s gooch after running a marathon.
I thought I was going to throw up and pass out all at once
I made Brussel sprout soup. Took it into work and warmed it up on the microwave for my lunch. It stunk the office out so bad that one of my colleagues opened the window and vomited into the car park below. It actually tasted worse than it smelled too.
Our chickens had been laying eggs in a secret nest in the barn we didn’t know about, while moving something I crushed some. The smell of rotten eggs will make you vomit instantly.
Corpse. A neighbor who lived alone suddenly disappeared, and after a week the bakery owner who saw him everyday when he went there to buy some bread and have some coffee, asked us neighbors about him. We couldn’t reach him so we called the cops to check on him and when they entered his home he was dead on the bed. Heart attack. The stench filled the whole street for hours. It was the most horrible smell I’ve ever experienced in my life!
Jakes Pub in Ankeny, Iowa. Some choad with neck tattoos was unloading squirts of diarrhea into shot glasses in a corner and trying to fist bump his bros and anyone else walking in between grunts. It smelled like rotting corn and Monster energy drinks.
I used to work in a factory that built big air handlers and heat exchangers for the navy. On some units, they’d apply this stuff called sounddown. It was a blue, plasticy looking sheet about an inch thick that had to be cut to size. The smell from cutting into this stuff was insanely potent. It would fill the whole shop, seemingly. It had a weird chemically smell that made me incredibly nauseous. It hit some people the same way while others seemed to barely notice it. Luckily, I never had to handle that awful stuff.
The fumes of a sponge factory. I can’t even describe it but there was one on a road I’d take several times a year and so far that’s the only smell that made me physically gag every single time.
We live out in the country, not far off a two lane hwy. When my dog (red heeler) was really young, he apparently found some rotting roadkill, and decided to eat his fill. He came into the house, and pretty soon he started heaving – before we know what happened he barfed a huge pile of rotten entrails all over the living room carpet. The smell was so bad my wife gagged so hard she peed her pants and had to leave the room. Guess who had to clean it up??
I tutor children and adolescents at school. Once I had to help a child of about 7 years old do his homework. His mouth smelled so bad, he was full of cavities and his teeth were too yellow. I felt sorry for him. It was obviously his parents’ fault.
One time the meat drain at work was clogged. I moved something that was covering the drain and the stink came up. It was brutal. Rotting meat of all kinds.
I worked at a call center in Ottawa. I was in line behind a big dude who always wore the same black track pants. I can’t even describe his smell.
I drove thru a town in FL that had a huge paper mill, and of course I had my a/c turned on. O. M. G 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢 It was horrible! I’ve lived on a farm and in a farming community for my entire life, and I’m also a nurse, so trust me when I say I’ve smelled some things but this paper mill was next level horrible. I honestly don’t know how people can stand to work there or live there!
One time I was going to try making homemade tofu so I let some soybeans soak in a covered bowl. It ended up sitting for a couple weeks partly because after the first several days I was too scared to deal with it so I kept putting it off. The smell when I finally opened that thing to dispose of it was so. fucking. horrid. Worse than sewage.
If you’ve never smelt the results of a GI bleed from an old lady who is also a hoarder, a trail of shit-blood from her grimey mattress, down her hallways, into her living room, and all over her grimey recliner, and then left in the un-air-conditioned trash-filled house for 16 hours, you really don’t know the answer to this question, I promise
Filmed there and it was just different types and states of decomposing bodies. Burnt hair and flesh, bloated drowned bodies releasing gasses, the smell of table saws cutting through sternums and organ harvesting. Dried blood, vomit, bile, puss all trying to be hidden with half assed air fresheners.
I worked in a mortuary and we had a body brought in to us that was discovered decomposed in a lake. It was an overwhelming stench of rotting flesh, sulfur, ammonia, and sewage. It was the kind of smell that clings to your clothes, your nose, and it has stayed with me ever since.
I had a patient come in from nursing home and she had really bad bedsores that the nurses hadn’t changed since 2-3 days ago mixed with urine. I was gagging even though I had a mask on and was breathing through my mouth. I could just smell/taste it in the back of my throat. I know you can put stuff on the mask to cover the smell but that was the first time I could smell it even when breathing through my mouth. For a nurse, I don’t do well with smells even just regular poop
Bed sores that had gone down to the bone and gotten infected. The patient was attached to a couple wound vacuum that were full of blood, pus and tissue. She had the misfortune of living at a nursing home that didn’t take care of its patience. On a related note if you ever have to put a family member in a nursing home it’s imperative you visit at least once a week. It doesn’t matter how much money you’re spending, if you don’t visit, they will receive substandard care. Some of the very worst calls I ever got when I was an EMT were patient neglect at nursing homes.
Had a deep freeze go out when it was full to the brim with deer,goat, and sheep meat rotted like crazy blood was pouring out the bottom. Was horrendous
i work as a public transit driver. the other day i was driving and picked up a man who had a green reusable grocery bag on his foot. it was taped around his leg and it looked like he most likely had multiple bags or maybe bandages around the foot under the intial bag because it all looked massive, like a giant boot. he got on and sat down in the seats behind my door where i sit in an enclosed area. within minutes i could smell what smelled like rotting animal. i was genuinely holding my nose with one hand and driving with my other. i can only assume that underneath his wrappings, that mans foot was severely infected, potentially gangrene. every other person i picked up went to the opposite end to sit down. when i arrived at the station he got off and i aired out the vehicle by leaving the doors open for a few minutes. i had to get out to use the washroom before doing my next drive and when i stepped out of the driving area it smelled worse 10 fold. i actually don’t think i’ve ever in my life smelled something so putrid. perhaps the best thing i could compare it to is when you haven’t taken your compost out in two weeks and then leave it to sit in the hot sun for another week… but WORSE
When I worked in the ER in the early 2000s a woman came in by ambulance that they had to bring in from a big city because she was quite large. When she was wheeled in she smelled like nothing I could even begin to describe, upon examination she had lost a sandwich somewhere in an abdominal fold, at least a week ago as that was the last time she had sandwiches.
I did some mission work in a Central American country in high school. One day we drove to a community that was literally just “living” at a garbage dump. It was absolutely heartbreaking and wild to see kids playing on heaps of rotten trash.
I cannot explain the smell. Rotting everything, no doubt some human decomposition, small fires everywhere burning plastic and chemicals. There was no shelter in a general sense so human excrement anywhere and everywhere. It was like every bad smell combined into one. I can’t explain it but I also can’t forget it.
To me it’s always a rotting potato. I remember being so shocked that it was a mere potato. I’ve probably smelt worse smells – gangrene, green pus…. But the potato is tops it all.
I used to work at an animal shelter years ago (before rescues and such were a thing) The animals that had to be euthanized had to be frozen before disposal. Don’t ask me why. I have no idea. Anyway, one of the large freezers had stopped working at some point and no one noticed until one morning I came in to open for the day. The failing freezer had “exploded” from the thawing decomposing bodies inside. Truly the worst smell ever.
As I’m an embalmer and the funeral home I work for used to also do coroners pickups… So many things. Probably the worst is a deceased with advanced Tissue Gas (Clostridium perfringens).
6 weeks post Hurricane Katrina, in the French Quarter where all the restaurants, bars, and residential refrigerators had lost power in the storm and all the food rotted.
People were duct taping their home refrigerators shut and taking them out to the curb.
Lived in my uncle’s trailer court in college because free. It was a slum and No One cared about the people there. It was across from a processing plant. When spring came and everything warmed up, there was a horrific smell. I’d never smelled anything dead before, but I knew immediately that’s what it was. They city blamed the chemicals used in the plant. It was bullshit and all of us told them so. Many of us didn’t have AC, so our windows were open. I went to stay at my parents, and during that time a body was found in the woods behind the trailer court. By people who lived in the court. A homeless man had died out there in the middle of a very cold winter…and finally thawed out. If this would’ve been in a gated neighborhood, someone would’ve paid attention. I’ve never forgotten that life lesson.
a urine sample that was brought in to a lab. it was obvious it had been collected days ago and left in a hot car. it was like being handed a cup of hot soup, it was so warm. we were told to just decant it and let the main lab reject it.
the whole thing was red from the amount of blood in the urine. the cup hissed when i cracked it open. i tried to decant it but there was so much mucus? in it, the vacuum tubes and straw assembly just couldn’t work. i threw up and tapped out when a big glob of mucusy whatever flopped off the straw and onto my gloved hand. the girl who went in to finish the job barfed almost immediately. someone else went in, bagged the whole thing up while retching, walked that shit over to the main lab and told them to deal with it under thier hood system.
i am no stranger to “bad” smells. i know the scent of all stages of decay. i also have smelled more shit that the average human. this unholy urine bomb was not of this realm. it was like death, blood, c diff, and rotten pineapple all in a sun baked plastic cup. honestly shocked that thing hadn’t exploded in the car.
It’s amazing how absolutely putrid an ordinary, inoffensive potato can get. It’s actually worse than rotting meat… a close second is rotting tomatoes, not just kinda squishy but full on fuming in the July sun in the back of a truck covered in mold and slime rotting tomatoes.
Holy fukkin shit…
I adopted a dog from a woman in my building when she passed away. She didn’t take care of the dog’s teeth and they were rotting out. Poor dog’s breath smelled like raw sewage and rotting fish. Poor thing had to have all her teeth removed to save her kidneys and life.
A guy in my fraternity got a big abscess on his left butt check from taking a shot of testosterone. It swelled up to the size of maybe a tangerine. He was afraid to go to doctor and have his parents find out.
Another guy in same fraternity was a farm kid and said he could drain it since he had drained abscesses on horses hooves. He went to farm king and got supplies he needed. Of course a few of us wanted to watch and when he made incision, stuff sprayed out. It was legitimately the worst smelling thing I have smelled and I’m half gagging thinking about it 20 plus years later
He drained it, packed it and our buddy went to campus medical clinic, made up a story about needing antibiotics for being sick and it cleared up
Looking back on it, we were a bunch of really dumb 20 year olds
An ostomy bag full of poo. After a bowel resection and diverticulitis. It doesn’t smell like poo at all, it has it’s own special disgusting smell. 5mos of this smell, I never want to smell it again.
I rolled up to a car accident to offer assistance (off-duty EMT). The truck rolled several times before landing on its tires and the engine cut off. My then GF (a nurse) provided latex gloves and called 911 to notify CHP & Fire/EMS. The frame of the driver door (above the side mirror) had been crushed inward about 8”. The passenger exited the vehicle & was walking around on scene, staggering onto the Highway, all wall-eyed. After giving specific instructions to a bystanders/Samaritan, patient 1 was ok.
I opened the passenger door to see the driver, resting in an unnatural position, slumped forward in their seat, unresponsive and presenting with agonal respirations. (This was my first encounter seeing/hearing that. It’s forever burned into my memory) Since I couldn’t extricate, and there were clear signs of spinal injury, I decided to move to the back seat to hold the driver’s head and neck in place until Fire/EMS arrived. While entering the vehicle, I noticed pooled, splattered, spattered and coagulated blood covering about 30% of the window/windshield and the interior of the vehicle. I’ve been near blood before, this smelled different. After positioning myself directly behind the driver, I placed my hands on the sides of the driver’s head to pull their head back toward the head rest. That’s when I felt that the driver’s skull had been severely fractured (likely from the rollover), and lost its rigidity on the left side. One side of their head, intact; the other side, soft to the touch. (Lay flat on your back, relax your abdomen, press your fingers downward into your abdominal cavity. That soft.) The driver, still unresponsive, was drooling, drooling blood and something else I couldn’t identify…. Until I looked at the inside of the windshield. Dripping from the nose/mouth of the driver was gray matter. Yes, brain. The coagulated blood had traces of brain tissue that has been freshly squeezed and spewed out from the mouth & nose of the driver.
CHP and Fire/EMS arrived and determined that I was sufficiently providing care, so they left me to continue, returning to place a canvas tarp/shroud over both the driver and me. They used the jaws of life and a saw to rapidly extricate the driver and provide some relief to me. (It’s physically exhausting taking care of real-live dead people.)
The scent was nearly unbearable; unfortunately, I don’t know how to describe it (this was 20 years ago). The smell lingered for days. I couldn’t tell if it was my clothes, skin, or hair. Nothing helped but it eventually went away.
Closure: The passenger was treated on scene & taken to a trauma center. The driver died in my hands before First Responders arrived.
Comments
Dead animals, durian, my coworker.
The underside of an unwashed foreskin
This is probably pretty mild compared to some but one time a potato found its way out of its place and hid in the farthest depths of our pantry. The smell was terrible. When we found it, it was the saddest looking potato on record
Month old dead body in house during summer months
I know this is silly but when I was pregnant with my 3rd I had the worst all day sickness ever. Well my husband was cooking salmon one night, the only thing I could bare at the time, and when one of the pieces hit the pan, it was the most horrifying stinky fish smell of my life… I refused to go back in until every ounce of that stink was gone… I still, to this day, gag at the tiniest thought of salmon.
Cleaning out a basement months after a flood, homeowner didn’t have good insurance so they left it. Dead animals, unplugged freezer with meat, and mould, all dumped on the floor and soaked in filth water.
Rottweiler fart after eating pickled pigs feet. it hung in a 2500′ sq ft house with all doors & windows open for an hour.
Anal glands from a dog.
I was proctoring a test and this kid threw up all over himself. Whatever was in his stomach was not of this world. I still smell it when I think about it.
Pigs… holy shit!
Made me stop eating pork.
120+ Degrees port-a-potties.
The big pit where the raw sewage first enters the detroit wastewater treatment plant.
c diff during nursing placement on my 3rd day(i don’t do nursing anymore…)
Let me tell you the story of the worst fart I have ever smelled.
When I was 14, I attended an upscale reform school. I was one of a few kids whose tuition was paid for by a scholarship, and I didn’t have rich parents. However, there was kid named Jack who was from a very well to do family, I’m talking a summer home on Lake Como well to do.
One night a group of students (including myself and Jack) were hanging out in the dorms. I don’t remember who was talking about what, but Jack farted and the conversation fell silent and was replaced with screams of “ewww!” and “gross!”.
After a couple of seconds, the reactions turned to gagging as we all began to smell the most foul odor to ever have emanated from a human body. It was like a sulphur egg fart that had been trapped in his colon for several years, marinating in a toxic stew of shit gravy. It made my eyes water like mustard gas.
We all got up and ran for the door, and once outside, we made it about twenty feet before two staff members stopped us in our tracks, and demanded to know what we were freaking out about.
Before they finished their question, they started sniffing the air, and said “What the fuck is that?”. I tried explaining that it was Jack’s fart following us from the room, and that we were running from it like it was a fucking ghost, but they refused to believe that smell could’ve been produced by a person. Those of us who survived the events of the night collectively came to refer to his fart as “J-force one”.
I’ve come to hypothesize that the odor was the result of years of eating nothing but foie gras, caviar, and fancy cheese. He had the digestive system of a 12-year-old noble child living in Vienna in the 16th century. He was covered in an oily sheen that I can only assume was his body desperately trying to purge all the truffle oil he’s consumed throughout his life via the sweat glands.
Edit for typo.
My breath and mouth in general after my tonsillectomy
A patient came in with a leg wound he let fester, and it smelled like a gym locker room mixed with cat urine, rotten meat, and dumpster juice.
The way some severe alcoholics smell, kind of like a mix of sweet pickles and rotten potatoes. Strange that this happens to some and not others, for some reason.
My cats farts. Especially right in my face.
The rotten flesh of the people withdrawing from tranq at Kensington & allegheny Ave in Phila
Cauterized flesh.
Refrigerator left with food in it and no power for a month.
A grease trap being emptied behind an ethiopian restaurant I built a wheelchair ramp for. Just god awful
This one dude who used to ride in the nighttime ride service I worked at while in college, smelled like a combination of BO, unwiped ass, cigarettes, and curry spices. We called him captain stinky pants, and it usually took anywhere between 15 min and an hour for the smell to leave the van, and that’s WITH the windows open. Febreeze helped
necrotizing fasciitis (I’ll let you look on the internet what it looks like)
I’ve been around decaying animals, been to landfills on humid days…but my beagle came into my gaming room one night, ripped ass, and walked out…and I swear to high holy christ it reeked like both of those things combined with Bigfoot’s gooch after running a marathon.
I thought I was going to throw up and pass out all at once
The worst for me was when a guy opened his RV toilet drain to the pipe without screwing it on, and my skin burned from a skin cancer removal process.
I used to have to clean the grease trap in a fish & chip shop.
I made Brussel sprout soup. Took it into work and warmed it up on the microwave for my lunch. It stunk the office out so bad that one of my colleagues opened the window and vomited into the car park below. It actually tasted worse than it smelled too.
Our chickens had been laying eggs in a secret nest in the barn we didn’t know about, while moving something I crushed some. The smell of rotten eggs will make you vomit instantly.
Corpse. A neighbor who lived alone suddenly disappeared, and after a week the bakery owner who saw him everyday when he went there to buy some bread and have some coffee, asked us neighbors about him. We couldn’t reach him so we called the cops to check on him and when they entered his home he was dead on the bed. Heart attack. The stench filled the whole street for hours. It was the most horrible smell I’ve ever experienced in my life!
Surströmming
This guys breath on 10 hour flight 🥲😭 he sat next to me it was MISERABLE, I stg he has NEVER brushed his damn mouth, not even a tooth
The inside of a mayonnaise factory
Jakes Pub in Ankeny, Iowa. Some choad with neck tattoos was unloading squirts of diarrhea into shot glasses in a corner and trying to fist bump his bros and anyone else walking in between grunts. It smelled like rotting corn and Monster energy drinks.
I used to work in a factory that built big air handlers and heat exchangers for the navy. On some units, they’d apply this stuff called sounddown. It was a blue, plasticy looking sheet about an inch thick that had to be cut to size. The smell from cutting into this stuff was insanely potent. It would fill the whole shop, seemingly. It had a weird chemically smell that made me incredibly nauseous. It hit some people the same way while others seemed to barely notice it. Luckily, I never had to handle that awful stuff.
Never express a dogs anal glands.
The fumes of a sponge factory. I can’t even describe it but there was one on a road I’d take several times a year and so far that’s the only smell that made me physically gag every single time.
Ammonia and bleach …death awaits they who smell ammonia and bleach .
A dead body. Guy died in his truck on the weekend in the Texas heat and was found midday on Monday. Talk about the smell.
The rats that died in the wall.
We live out in the country, not far off a two lane hwy. When my dog (red heeler) was really young, he apparently found some rotting roadkill, and decided to eat his fill. He came into the house, and pretty soon he started heaving – before we know what happened he barfed a huge pile of rotten entrails all over the living room carpet. The smell was so bad my wife gagged so hard she peed her pants and had to leave the room. Guess who had to clean it up??
A backed up grease trap in a restaurant I was working in. I couldn’t get within 50 feet of the kitchen without gagging.
Guy dying of cancer, the smell of death would cling to your skin and hair, even after a shower!
I used to be a bartender. I’ll say a GWAR concert. Metal boys all damp and covered in fake blood does not smell great.
I tutor children and adolescents at school. Once I had to help a child of about 7 years old do his homework. His mouth smelled so bad, he was full of cavities and his teeth were too yellow. I felt sorry for him. It was obviously his parents’ fault.
Dead animal? Fine. Skunk? Fine. Hoarder house? Very much not fine.
Well I think a dead body would be brutal.
One time the meat drain at work was clogged. I moved something that was covering the drain and the stink came up. It was brutal. Rotting meat of all kinds.
I worked at a call center in Ottawa. I was in line behind a big dude who always wore the same black track pants. I can’t even describe his smell.
It was like old rotten garbage water and ass.
I drove thru a town in FL that had a huge paper mill, and of course I had my a/c turned on. O. M. G 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢 It was horrible! I’ve lived on a farm and in a farming community for my entire life, and I’m also a nurse, so trust me when I say I’ve smelled some things but this paper mill was next level horrible. I honestly don’t know how people can stand to work there or live there!
One time I was going to try making homemade tofu so I let some soybeans soak in a covered bowl. It ended up sitting for a couple weeks partly because after the first several days I was too scared to deal with it so I kept putting it off. The smell when I finally opened that thing to dispose of it was so. fucking. horrid. Worse than sewage.
Shit-blood.
If you’ve never smelt the results of a GI bleed from an old lady who is also a hoarder, a trail of shit-blood from her grimey mattress, down her hallways, into her living room, and all over her grimey recliner, and then left in the un-air-conditioned trash-filled house for 16 hours, you really don’t know the answer to this question, I promise
Los Angeles’ North Mission Morgue
Filmed there and it was just different types and states of decomposing bodies. Burnt hair and flesh, bloated drowned bodies releasing gasses, the smell of table saws cutting through sternums and organ harvesting. Dried blood, vomit, bile, puss all trying to be hidden with half assed air fresheners.
Death welcomes all walks of former life.
Dead body melted into his recliner in a house with the heat on. Pretty bad.
I worked in a mortuary and we had a body brought in to us that was discovered decomposed in a lake. It was an overwhelming stench of rotting flesh, sulfur, ammonia, and sewage. It was the kind of smell that clings to your clothes, your nose, and it has stayed with me ever since.
I had a patient come in from nursing home and she had really bad bedsores that the nurses hadn’t changed since 2-3 days ago mixed with urine. I was gagging even though I had a mask on and was breathing through my mouth. I could just smell/taste it in the back of my throat. I know you can put stuff on the mask to cover the smell but that was the first time I could smell it even when breathing through my mouth. For a nurse, I don’t do well with smells even just regular poop
A protein bottle I forgot in my car overnight. Just throw it away if it ever happens to you, it is truly not worth it to salvage.
Retained tampon (worked in Ob/Gyn)
Bed sores that had gone down to the bone and gotten infected. The patient was attached to a couple wound vacuum that were full of blood, pus and tissue. She had the misfortune of living at a nursing home that didn’t take care of its patience. On a related note if you ever have to put a family member in a nursing home it’s imperative you visit at least once a week. It doesn’t matter how much money you’re spending, if you don’t visit, they will receive substandard care. Some of the very worst calls I ever got when I was an EMT were patient neglect at nursing homes.
Had a deep freeze go out when it was full to the brim with deer,goat, and sheep meat rotted like crazy blood was pouring out the bottom. Was horrendous
Got a tonsil stone stuck in my sinuses one time
Dead bowel when working in the OR. The wintergreen oil I had inside my double masks couldn’t even cover that up.
9/11 death in the air for months
it was horrible
World Trade Center burning…for weeks.
i work as a public transit driver. the other day i was driving and picked up a man who had a green reusable grocery bag on his foot. it was taped around his leg and it looked like he most likely had multiple bags or maybe bandages around the foot under the intial bag because it all looked massive, like a giant boot. he got on and sat down in the seats behind my door where i sit in an enclosed area. within minutes i could smell what smelled like rotting animal. i was genuinely holding my nose with one hand and driving with my other. i can only assume that underneath his wrappings, that mans foot was severely infected, potentially gangrene. every other person i picked up went to the opposite end to sit down. when i arrived at the station he got off and i aired out the vehicle by leaving the doors open for a few minutes. i had to get out to use the washroom before doing my next drive and when i stepped out of the driving area it smelled worse 10 fold. i actually don’t think i’ve ever in my life smelled something so putrid. perhaps the best thing i could compare it to is when you haven’t taken your compost out in two weeks and then leave it to sit in the hot sun for another week… but WORSE
When I worked in the ER in the early 2000s a woman came in by ambulance that they had to bring in from a big city because she was quite large. When she was wheeled in she smelled like nothing I could even begin to describe, upon examination she had lost a sandwich somewhere in an abdominal fold, at least a week ago as that was the last time she had sandwiches.
I did some mission work in a Central American country in high school. One day we drove to a community that was literally just “living” at a garbage dump. It was absolutely heartbreaking and wild to see kids playing on heaps of rotten trash.
I cannot explain the smell. Rotting everything, no doubt some human decomposition, small fires everywhere burning plastic and chemicals. There was no shelter in a general sense so human excrement anywhere and everywhere. It was like every bad smell combined into one. I can’t explain it but I also can’t forget it.
To me it’s always a rotting potato. I remember being so shocked that it was a mere potato. I’ve probably smelt worse smells – gangrene, green pus…. But the potato is tops it all.
I used to work for a dentist. Hands down, a mouth full of periodontal disease and decay. It’s horrid.
I used to work at an animal shelter years ago (before rescues and such were a thing) The animals that had to be euthanized had to be frozen before disposal. Don’t ask me why. I have no idea. Anyway, one of the large freezers had stopped working at some point and no one noticed until one morning I came in to open for the day. The failing freezer had “exploded” from the thawing decomposing bodies inside. Truly the worst smell ever.
As I’m an embalmer and the funeral home I work for used to also do coroners pickups… So many things. Probably the worst is a deceased with advanced Tissue Gas (Clostridium perfringens).
6 weeks post Hurricane Katrina, in the French Quarter where all the restaurants, bars, and residential refrigerators had lost power in the storm and all the food rotted.
People were duct taping their home refrigerators shut and taking them out to the curb.
It was like living in an open mass grave.
Lived in my uncle’s trailer court in college because free. It was a slum and No One cared about the people there. It was across from a processing plant. When spring came and everything warmed up, there was a horrific smell. I’d never smelled anything dead before, but I knew immediately that’s what it was. They city blamed the chemicals used in the plant. It was bullshit and all of us told them so. Many of us didn’t have AC, so our windows were open. I went to stay at my parents, and during that time a body was found in the woods behind the trailer court. By people who lived in the court. A homeless man had died out there in the middle of a very cold winter…and finally thawed out. If this would’ve been in a gated neighborhood, someone would’ve paid attention. I’ve never forgotten that life lesson.
a urine sample that was brought in to a lab. it was obvious it had been collected days ago and left in a hot car. it was like being handed a cup of hot soup, it was so warm. we were told to just decant it and let the main lab reject it.
the whole thing was red from the amount of blood in the urine. the cup hissed when i cracked it open. i tried to decant it but there was so much mucus? in it, the vacuum tubes and straw assembly just couldn’t work. i threw up and tapped out when a big glob of mucusy whatever flopped off the straw and onto my gloved hand. the girl who went in to finish the job barfed almost immediately. someone else went in, bagged the whole thing up while retching, walked that shit over to the main lab and told them to deal with it under thier hood system.
i am no stranger to “bad” smells. i know the scent of all stages of decay. i also have smelled more shit that the average human. this unholy urine bomb was not of this realm. it was like death, blood, c diff, and rotten pineapple all in a sun baked plastic cup. honestly shocked that thing hadn’t exploded in the car.
Rotting human corpses in Iraq. They smell like dead animals only “sweeter.”The sights of war are bad but the smells are worse.
It’s amazing how absolutely putrid an ordinary, inoffensive potato can get. It’s actually worse than rotting meat… a close second is rotting tomatoes, not just kinda squishy but full on fuming in the July sun in the back of a truck covered in mold and slime rotting tomatoes.
Holy fukkin shit…
The Paper Mill and adjacent wastewater/sewage treatment plant in Jessup, Georgia.
I adopted a dog from a woman in my building when she passed away. She didn’t take care of the dog’s teeth and they were rotting out. Poor dog’s breath smelled like raw sewage and rotting fish. Poor thing had to have all her teeth removed to save her kidneys and life.
A guy in my fraternity got a big abscess on his left butt check from taking a shot of testosterone. It swelled up to the size of maybe a tangerine. He was afraid to go to doctor and have his parents find out.
Another guy in same fraternity was a farm kid and said he could drain it since he had drained abscesses on horses hooves. He went to farm king and got supplies he needed. Of course a few of us wanted to watch and when he made incision, stuff sprayed out. It was legitimately the worst smelling thing I have smelled and I’m half gagging thinking about it 20 plus years later
He drained it, packed it and our buddy went to campus medical clinic, made up a story about needing antibiotics for being sick and it cleared up
Looking back on it, we were a bunch of really dumb 20 year olds
An ostomy bag full of poo. After a bowel resection and diverticulitis. It doesn’t smell like poo at all, it has it’s own special disgusting smell. 5mos of this smell, I never want to smell it again.
Gray matter.
I rolled up to a car accident to offer assistance (off-duty EMT). The truck rolled several times before landing on its tires and the engine cut off. My then GF (a nurse) provided latex gloves and called 911 to notify CHP & Fire/EMS. The frame of the driver door (above the side mirror) had been crushed inward about 8”. The passenger exited the vehicle & was walking around on scene, staggering onto the Highway, all wall-eyed. After giving specific instructions to a bystanders/Samaritan, patient 1 was ok.
I opened the passenger door to see the driver, resting in an unnatural position, slumped forward in their seat, unresponsive and presenting with agonal respirations. (This was my first encounter seeing/hearing that. It’s forever burned into my memory) Since I couldn’t extricate, and there were clear signs of spinal injury, I decided to move to the back seat to hold the driver’s head and neck in place until Fire/EMS arrived. While entering the vehicle, I noticed pooled, splattered, spattered and coagulated blood covering about 30% of the window/windshield and the interior of the vehicle. I’ve been near blood before, this smelled different. After positioning myself directly behind the driver, I placed my hands on the sides of the driver’s head to pull their head back toward the head rest. That’s when I felt that the driver’s skull had been severely fractured (likely from the rollover), and lost its rigidity on the left side. One side of their head, intact; the other side, soft to the touch. (Lay flat on your back, relax your abdomen, press your fingers downward into your abdominal cavity. That soft.) The driver, still unresponsive, was drooling, drooling blood and something else I couldn’t identify…. Until I looked at the inside of the windshield. Dripping from the nose/mouth of the driver was gray matter. Yes, brain. The coagulated blood had traces of brain tissue that has been freshly squeezed and spewed out from the mouth & nose of the driver.
CHP and Fire/EMS arrived and determined that I was sufficiently providing care, so they left me to continue, returning to place a canvas tarp/shroud over both the driver and me. They used the jaws of life and a saw to rapidly extricate the driver and provide some relief to me. (It’s physically exhausting taking care of real-live dead people.)
The scent was nearly unbearable; unfortunately, I don’t know how to describe it (this was 20 years ago). The smell lingered for days. I couldn’t tell if it was my clothes, skin, or hair. Nothing helped but it eventually went away.
Closure: The passenger was treated on scene & taken to a trauma center. The driver died in my hands before First Responders arrived.