Downside

[mrissa]

The nose has a down side.

There was a man in Cub Foods who smelled ill. He absolutely reeked of ketones. He was not going to keep going very long in his current state. He was right in front of me in line and right next to me bagging groceries. For those of you who remember the ill-smelling man on BART lo these many moons ago, it was the same smell. Badbadbadbadupsettingbad.

He was excessively thin. He was buying food that did not seem to indicate that this excessive thinness was due to deliberate attempts on his part.

You know all those stories where someone can see people's death and has to figure out whether to tell them and all that? Yeah. Doesn't take anything mystical. Just the nose. But you know people won't thank you. Someone that skeletal either already knows there's something wrong or is in pretty deep denial and in either case will not appreciate a reminder of their mortality from some stranger in the grocery store who claims to have smelled them. "You stink like death." Thanks, random stranger!

But I just wanted to shout, go, go! To a doctor! Run!

I'm going to have to make some pretty smelly things tonight to get the scent out of my nose. Spicy sausage lasagna. Bread. Stuff that smells like life going on, maybe.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't know how that conversation would go.

"Are you receiving medical care?"
"Why do you ask that?"
... What next?

Or, "Why's that any of your business?" Or, "For what?" Or, "Yes, but I'm afraid it's terminal." Or....

I just don't see a good direction for that to go.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

Ouch. Even fabricating an ill relative "My uncle looked like you before he got really ill." doesn't come off very well.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

This is the one area in which I fear Scandosotan instincts toward being circumspect do NOT pay off.

How about just this? "Sir, you seem to be very ill. Are you okay?"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And how, exactly, does that work any better than "Are you receiving medical care?" For someone who is mostly thin and stinky? I ask again: what is the success condition of that statement? Where does that conversation go that's a step up from where things stood? If the person already knows he's desperately ill, how does a reminder from some little know-it-all in the grocery store improve his day? And if he doesn't already know, on what grounds do I suggest that he believe me? Without, I might add, offending him?

I don't think this is a Scandosotan thing. I really doubt that the people I ran into in the Bay Area would have done differently.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I agree that it isn't a Scandosotan thing. There's no polite way to ask about a complete stranger's medical condition. And there's no good answer, once you do.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

Mmm, perhaps. I come from New York, where people can be rather blunt.

So it might have gone like this, in a deli in Brooklyn: "Ohmygawd, you smell like you're about to die! Are you okay?"

Of course, New Yorkers are rude soandsos, so maybe that's not a good example. :-)

[ladysea.livejournal.com]

Very hard situation.

I know the sensitive nose part, as I have one too. It felt like it took months and months to get the smell of the hospitals out, after both my dads passed away. It freaks me out to smell anything similar to this day.

And I got weird on MFD the other day. There is a certain smell I associate with graveyards. Can't explain it, which is probably why she looked at me like I was a freak. =P

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It always takes me a minute to translate MFD as mnfiddledragon, even though the acronym comes quite clearly from that.

[ladysea.livejournal.com]

I am lazy. Mnfiddledragon seems so long to type out with the tag. =P

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think the problem is that MN is my automatic abbreviation for Minnesota, and MF is...not.

[ladysea.livejournal.com]

*nod* I figure one letter for each part as I think of her as Minnesota Fiddle Dragon.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

A couple of weeks ago (that would be an Eastern couple, meaning some indeterminate number of weeks, greater than one, probably less than ten, and not a Midwestern couple, which shockingly means two), as I was walking back to work after lunch, I saw a man with his arms around two girls, seeming to be leaning on them. Presumably, he was just leaving one of the clinics and wasn't feeling real well. One of the girls looked to be thirteen or fifteen, the other nine or ten. Their movement seemed erratic, and as I watched, I realized that the girls weren't just supporting him, but tugging on him, trying to keep him from stumblling off the curb into the street, or running into the retaining wall on the other side. There was a young man ranging along side, sixteen or so. Presumably, they were a family unit. The girls had the devil's own time getting their dad to stop at the light, and wait to cross at the green. They crossed, and I went back to work.

What do you do? If you offer to help, you are almost certain to be verbally abused by the presumably drunken father. The daughters will earnestly assure you that nothing is wrong, they don't need any help. Their pride is on the line, and they can't stand the idea of humiliating their father in public. Hopefully, the son has a driver's license and can get them all home. He's sure to be furious with any attempt to interfere. The fact that I'm white and they're black only complicates things.

Chances are, it all came out in the end. One way or another, they probably made it home alive. Whatever dreadful family dynamics that were going on aren't amenable to a brief intervention. I'm not going to offer long-term help.

Chances are, they made it home alive.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the ketones. It's a smell that, once smelled, you always recognize. I lived for many years with a very brittle diabetic, and I could tell when his blood chemistry was out of whack when he walked into the room.

But no, there's no nice way of mentioning it, especially in our society in which any sentence that refers to the fact that people even have smells (other than perfume) is considered vaguely insulting.

[sculpin.livejournal.com]

(Hi. I'm a random person who stumbled across your blog a while back. I read it for book recommendations. Thanks for getting me hooked on Rosemary Kirstein.)

That's difficult. I don't think there's anything that can be said in that situation.

A handful of years ago I was very ill and lost about twenty percent of my bodyweight in a couple of weeks. I was gaunt as a stick and probably smelled awful, and it wasn't clear to me that I wasn't going to drop dead rather soon. It was a big deal for me to get out and do normal things like going to the store; it was like trying to take a mini-vacation from being so damn sick.

To be reminded of my illness at the grocery store would have been very deflating, and doubly so if I were reminded that I smell bad. I'd probably question, some late gloomy night, whether I should even be going out and bothering people with my irremedially smelly self; that's a terrible thing to think.

The guy's probably doing what he can.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks for verifying the choice to keep my mouth shut. I think when people are feeling fragile, sometimes even an expression of concern is going to sound wrong, even if it's well meant. And in this case, it would be hard to get the well-meaning across.

[carbonel]

I know the smell you mean, having dealt with a number of uncontrolled diabetics in my time. You probably did the right thing, but the one thing that I might have been tempted to ask was if he was a diabetic, because ketoacidosis is something that should be dealt with quickly.

I keep wondering if I smell that way to someone with a sensitive nose (which I don't have), given that I've been doing the low-carb thing for several months and am presumably in ketosis.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Since you bring it up, no, you don't smell that way. People generally smell different in dietary ketosis than they do otherwise, but not by that large an amount. And in your specific case, I've met you and stood close enough to tell you, not even close.