The Nurse's Nose

I smell dead people. I also smell cigarette smoke, urine, unwashed pits, alcohol and C-diff. It's the curse of the nurse, this ability to smell things, identify them, locate them, and deal with them. But I digress...back to the dead people thing. Perhaps a better statement would be, “I smell dying people.” especially people dying of cancer. I hate this smell, not just because it symbolizes the loss of a life, but because, now, when I smell death, I think of my grandfather. He died a year ago tomorrow from pancreatic cancer. He also died at home, surrounded by his memories and tended to by those who loved him. But as he lay there, atrophying and suffering, his skin delineating every crag of his skull, I could smell him dying. I felt so powerless because when I entered the house, and smelled his death and decay, my nursing skills and critical thinking and experience fled back out to hide in the truck. I sat at his bedside and felt utterly useless.

The day we saw the surgeon and he told us all: Grandpa, Grandma, Mom, me, and my daughter, that Grandpa's cancer was extensive and inoperable, Grandpa stole a moment to level his gaze at me,

“Whatever happens, don't let them whittle on me.”

“I promise, Grandpa.”

“You know how your Grandma is and you have to keep her from letting them whittle on me.”

(Grandma is an entire force of her own)

“I promise Grandpa.”

He knew he could ask me this monumental thing and I would be the only person who could oppose my Grandma and every other member of the family who might want to indulge in some last-ditch efforts to assuage their guilt and fear. He knew I had the steel rod in me that makes me do the hard thing.

What I did not know was that I would sit and smell his sickly sweet death and wonder how much morphine it would take to stop his suffering. I did not know I would watch helplessly as the strongest human being I knew was eaten from the inside out. I did not know how much I could weep and pray for death to find him. And the last night, when I leaned over his hospital bed and kissed his cheek and told him I loved him and it was OK to go home and that we would all see to Grandma, I did not know how much I would still miss him tonight.