Sniffer memory for the loss.

I've already written once tonight but I can't sleep. It doesn't do me any good to just lie in bed trying to will myself to sleep, so I decided to get up and wander around and maybe I'll get tired soon enough. I had a bizarre experience this evening at class. The earlier rant was just the aftermath of the class that had me thinking things through on the drive home. But, the class went to our second medical library tonight and it was at the VA hospital. After the librarian showed us some things at the little library, she decided to give us a tour of the hospital from the top down. So we began on the sixth floor. She didn't tell us til we got there that it was ICU. I stepped off the elevator and the smell hit me like somebody punched me in the face. I haven't been in an ICU since my mom died nearly four years ago, but I guess all ICUs smell the same. It's like a regular hospital ward smell plus a heavy dose of decay and stitches and open wounds and tears and panic and sedation medicine and IV fluids and blood and just all bad things rolled into one. I had forgotten what it was like and the sudden reminder was enough to make me physically take a step back toward the elevator as soon as I stepped off. I didn't really think that it would affect me as much as it did, but it was one of those things that sort of sideswipes you when you're just going along. My eyes welled up and I didn't hear a single thing the librarian said and could hardly even move away from the elevator area. It was hard to breathe because I was actually trying not to breathe any of it in and staring at the floor. It was crazy and I don't think I've been so glad to leave a place in a long time. It's bizarre how much a single smell can totally screw with your head. They say that smell is one of the strongest senses and that it is tightly tied to memories and things, and I'm sure I've experienced that before, but never as overwhelming as this. I think it was mostly just the shock of it. If I had known it was going to be the ICU before the elevator dinged, maybe I could have prepared myself a little bit? I like to think so, anyway. But I bet I still would have been kind of taken aback by it because it smelled
exactly.
the.
same.

Exactly.

Blech.