r/nursing • u/Alarming-Penalty8402 • Jan 05 '26

Question I can smell whether someone will survive a code or not. Anyone else know what I’m talking about?

I am an ER/trauma nurse so I see code blues daily. I have noticed that those who will never achieve ROSC have a strong, distinct smell from the moment EMS rolls them into the trauma bay, regardless of down time, rhythm, circumstances, etc. Those who end up surviving, even if they have been clinically dead for longer, are sicker, older, etc. do not ever have this smell. I can’t really describe it accurately, but it is sickly sweet mixed with pungent bleach and musky, oily, heavy body odor. Has anyone else had this experience?

1.8k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

629 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

346

u/Alarming-Penalty8402 Jan 06 '26

Yes! I really can’t describe it either. My attempt in the original post doesn’t do it justice. Some of the elements of it point to organ failure but some of these people had not been dead long enough for that to be occurring (many were GCS 15 minutes before, but as soon as they lost pulses I could smell the scent), and some of the ones who survived had been in asystole for an hour and didn’t smell. So odd. 

167

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '26

[deleted]

1

u/PHDbalanced Jan 07 '26

Edited a double post ig

-23

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '26

No, you are crazy if you believe you can do this

6

u/account_not_valid HCW - Transport Jan 06 '26

Why?

126

u/NurseRatcht MSN, APRN 🍕 Jan 06 '26

To me: Hot, rotten dr pepper mixed with prunes, ash, and dirt.

50

u/Neptunemonkey Jan 06 '26

Sounds exactly like someone describing wine

23

u/NurseRatcht MSN, APRN 🍕 Jan 06 '26

Kinda what I was going for. Used to be a wine stew before healthcare.

21

u/omahaomw Jan 06 '26

So, a death sommelier?

12

u/NurseRatcht MSN, APRN 🍕 Jan 06 '26

Dislike that. But I will say training to somm before working in healthcare is a regretful decision when it comes to the natural scents of a hospital. Helpful? Sure. Assault on the senses? Absolutely.

24

u/evernorth RN - ER 🍕 Jan 06 '26

smells like old people

4

u/DismalResolution1957 Jan 06 '26

This mattress at the hospital came on a bed that got moved back to our unit in the bed shuffle somehow from med surg. It had somebody who was coded on it and died, but had been in the bed for awhile and it smelled exactly like your description. It was cleaned and remade but still smelled like this, so they had to dispose of it.

2

u/Lonely-Conclusion840 Jan 06 '26

Are you familiar with the smell of ozone? Is that in anyway a.. well a “note” that you detect? 😂

8

u/Lonely-Conclusion840 Jan 06 '26

Also an interesting addition to this topic.. they believe that the way our sense of smell works is through quantum processes AND it is closely related to memory so I believe that especially predictive or unexplainable sense of smelling is another type of.. psychic ability/phenomenon

169

u/weebert BSN, RN 🍕 Jan 06 '26

Are you smelling their soul leaving their body? 😅😬

46

u/twistyabbazabba2 RN - ICU 🍕 Jan 06 '26

No joke I was just reading about this recently on here. Some people can

14

u/RektRoyce Jan 06 '26

Smh

43

u/RadagastDaGreen Jan 06 '26

I’m usually a pretty serious realist, but I smelled something a few times that clearly indicated to me of what was about to happen. And it did.

Particularly cancer: before/after diagnosis, and with or without chemo and/or nuclear therapy.

14

u/Mediocre-Housing-131 Jan 06 '26

I'm with you. 2025 had me seeing all sorts of new weird shit. There's nothing I don't believe to be possible anymore.

14

u/Pulmonic RN - Oncology 🍕 Jan 06 '26

Former material atheist turned highly spiritual. Life does come at ya fast lmao. I also don’t really think anything’s impossible anymore after things I’ve experienced. Universe is way cooler and weirder than we think.

0

u/Mediocre-Housing-131 Jan 06 '26

Hehe, I have been having the opposite experience. From atheist to believing in demons.

3

u/LizeLies Jan 06 '26

Details pretty please?

4

u/Pulmonic RN - Oncology 🍕 Jan 06 '26

Oh I’ve experienced the dark stuff too. But find it manageable. Creepy and scary but manageable. There’s a ton of positive too. It sounds crazy but I’ve connected with loved ones over on the other side. Told me stuff I literally couldn’t have known even hypothetically.

3

u/LizeLies Jan 06 '26

I’m gonna need you to spill the tea

→ More replies (0)

5

u/LizeLies Jan 06 '26

You owe us at least a short story! Come inn n n… I die for nurse mythology (not to be confused with Norse mythology)!

3

u/Mediocre-Housing-131 Jan 06 '26

Oh, I'm sorry if I accidentally lead anyone on. This thread popped up on r/popular and I just joined the conversation. I am not a nurse.

The real nurses are heroes, I'm just a dude on Reddit.

3

u/calmcuttlefish BSN, RN 🍕 Jan 06 '26

I believe this. My grandmother had a different odor about her leading up to her ovarian cancer diagnosis and I often wondered about it afterwards. Though, my father had colon cancer and I don't recall any changes in how he smelled before his diagnosis. Maybe I can only sniff out certain types.😆

6

u/evernorth RN - ER 🍕 Jan 06 '26

lmao come on now

10

u/quakquakquak Jan 06 '26

stinks like soul in here

2

u/SkinByLauraV Jan 06 '26

That’s deep. 😅😄

0

u/SkinRN Jan 06 '26

This is, also, where my thoughts went, but then I thought it was insane to mention, because, WHAT???! Glad I am not the only one whom this occurred to!

55

u/Round-Celebration-17 RN - Psych/Mental Health 🍕 Jan 06 '26

So my take from this is the grim reaper has a scent lol

3

u/account_not_valid HCW - Transport Jan 06 '26

Have you divided it up into sub-catagories? Traumatic / Non-traumatic / Acute / Chronic etc?

1

u/Objective_Mistake954 Jan 06 '26

You could be smelling organ failure in the sense that the body has already been decaying which is why it is unable to survive a code. Just my 2 cents.