Mine is vomit and sometimes, I guess related, the “coffee grounds” that can appear during CPR of someone having airway/gi troubles. We got rosc on the last guy so, it’s worth it!
Scranulum@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Some are affected significantly by it. I would say that in my experience, most aren’t. Most would work a messy suicide with open cranial trauma and then go eat a big plate of spaghetti after turning the scene over to the coroner.
Dead human flesh smells like most raw meat does. Pork isn’t any more similar than beef as far as the aroma is concerned. Rotting human flesh smells pretty similar to most other rotting meats. A lot of times, it smells worse because most people’s experience with rotting meat is a few ounces, maybe a few pounds, that they left in their refrigerator or something of that nature. 200 pounds of it marinatinginside a dank bathroom with poor ventilation, exposed subflooring, and a space heater that’s been running for two weeks is gonna smell a lot worse.
But everyone’s different and has their things. I know a guy who can handle everything except when someone vomits. He will spew every time without question.
The dead people are unfortunately far from the nastiest things you encounter, usually.
flandish@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I barfed the coffee grounds in the hospital and they shit bricks. Thought that was only “fresh blood in the stomach” kinda thing?
flandish@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
i mean if you’re eating coffee yeah but I was talking about gi blood yeah. :/
SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
This guy knows what he’s talking about
Aeao@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s the thing tho nasty and gross I could deal with. I’m no hero like emergency services. I grew up on a farm, raised and processed animals here and there. Stumbled apon missing animals that were long past a pleasant smell. I had a grandmother that was a hoarder, I raised 4 kids…
I’m the one in my family that does the “ewww I just can’t… Please I can’t even talking about it *dry heaves”
My family jokes that I would be the guy in the movie doing an autopsy with his sandwich sitting on the chest of the body.
Now none of that was even close to the mental trauma doctors, police, firefighters face. I also know human decomposition is described as much worse. Id also assume smelling the stuff I’ve smelled from animals probably also hits mentally harder coming from a human. I’m not at all saying “meh I’ve smelled it all”
The point I’m making is terrible smells are bad but seeing something awful and smelling a steak or something good? That seems worse. Like if I drained an abscess in an animal and smelled sugar cookies… I wouldn’t be able to eat sugar cookies anymore. I assume. I don’t really know which is why I’m asking.
But I did read you said a person who died by fire doesn’t smell like steak or food? That’s good to hear. Thats what I was unsettled but curious about.
running_ragged@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m not speaking from experience with the firefighters side here, but I do think it come’s down to the ick factor of smell is so much stronger than the yum factor.
Smell is how we know if something is safe to eat, so if its off even a bit, that jumps to the peak of our attention.Usually if you burn something a little bit, that’s the only smell you notice.
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I assumed you were also meaning about getting to your nice steak some days later and getting a whiff of memory of the burning-to-death person, and being put off by the trauma from that.
The answers I’ve seen here (really good ones! Thank you guys!) don’t seem to address that directly, but it sounds from them like mostly if you work in that job you learn to push away the horror one way or another and get on with life, and steak-vs-man turns out not so different - even with, as you say, smell being particularly evocative of memories.
RussianBot8453@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Truth. I was an Army Medic and after working on a stomach wound where the patient puked up blood, I went to the dining facility and had cherry pie. Looked exactly the same as the blood puke. Didn’t bother me one bit.
Suck_on_my_Presence@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Oh. What a… lovely picture you’ve painted.
(It is gross, but I have the absolute utmost respect for the things emt / firefighters / medical peeps put up with. Hats off to you all)