reply to post by avriel
Good topic here; thanks for posting it. When I was young, I worked as a nurses aide with terminally ill cancer patients. Such intimate contact with
them gave me a close up view of their skin color changes, the changes in their eyes, etc. Ten years later when I went to visit my father who'd
became sick with diabetes, I looked at him and instantly recognized he had the features of someone with cancer. About 6 months later, the doctors
diagnosed prostate cancer with mets to the bones. Throughout my life, I am often able to see this in people, but I do not say anything. They
probably already know they have it. I never noticed a particular scent in patients with cancer.
However, I once dated a man for about 6 months -- a near genius who was getting straight As in college. One night we laid down in bed, and I noticed
the scent of his skin had changed. It reminded me of when I'd visited a hospital for mental patients on a high school field trip. Several days
later, he became full blown schizophrenic. Since then, I've noticed the same scent he developed when I worked with mentally handicapped children as
a cottage parent. I believe it is due to the biochemical changes -- it must alter the scent of one's perspiration.
Note: I just came across a few blips about this phenomena:
"...this identifiable or characteristic smell that comes out of the sweat of patients with schizophrenia and this has been known right back in the
1960s, where psychiatrists used to diagnose people with the disorganized version, the old term for that of schizophrenia, was hebephrenia. And what
we've been able to do--we've just released a paper that's come out this month in Psychiatry Research, that reports for the first time the
assessment of people with chronic schizophrenia, trying to detect this schizophrenia smell..."
from:
www.schizophrenia.com...
[edit on 11/15/08 by aWoman]
