“Do sick people smell funny?” Only sick clowns. 
I can testify that a diabetic whose blood-sugar DOES definitely have a specific scent. It’s a body-chemistry thing. So I have no trouble believing that other body-chemistry-altering illnesses change someone’s scent.
Robertson Davies exellent book The Cunning Man has an interesting chapter on the role of smell in medicine.
Diseases known for their odor include liver diseases, abcesses, flesh eating disease (indescribable!), vaginitis, strep, sinusitis and urinary tract infections. Probably plus a whole lot more.
One of my dear dear friends died of AIDS–wow, it’s been 10 years ago now! One thing I distinctly remember about him was before he really became ill I always noticed a smell about him. Not necessarily a horrible bad smell…it was sort of a sweet smell in a way, like corn on the cob. Sounds weird, but I remember it to this day.
One of the things I learned in Bacteriology, lo these many years ago, was that bacteria do indeed have different odors. Staphylococcus aureus smells “mousy” (that’s what the lab manual called it; me, I’ve never sniffed a mouse so I dunno) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa smells just like grape kool-aid. I can’t remember any of the others off-hand. They sort of discourage sniffing bacterial cultures in the lab nowadays. Although I can still tell a fermenter or anaerobe by smell.
(I also can usually tell if a blood alcohol is going to be high by smelling the serum sample. Is anybody impressed?)
:o <----- Me. Holding my nose and trying to breathe through my mouth so I don’t, you know… smell anything.
The things we say to keep the boo-té coming. Ya’ know? 
To answer the hockey I mean opening post question.
Yes.
And their smell changes for sure when they are dying.
More details hockey. I mean later.
sorry I cant be serious right now.
Well. Now I feel slighted because I didn’t get the Sickness Smell Magic. Really, about the only thing about a person (besides failure to bathe regularly, or overuse of perfume) that I can tell by their smell is if they have an odd and/or crappy diet (i.e., if they’re from another country with vastly different foods, or if they just eat fast food constantly).
Some people smell like spit to me, but I have yet to figure out why.
I’ll tell you one thing, though . . . I am fascinated by the Premenstrual Breath (PMB?) phenomenon outlined by DeVena. How does your husband identify the smell? Good? Bad? Garlicky? What?
Seriously? Spit has an odor? Is it a strong one? I mean, if it isn’t, how did you find out about the smell? Did someone spit near your nose? On your nose?
In your nose?
Weird. To me, that is; probably not to you either, auntie em (not that it isn’t weird, just that it’s not weird to you that it’s weird to me, what with my almost total lack of smell-o-rama).
I just never thought of spit having any odor. Outside the spit containing chunks of leftover garlic or something equally… noticeable.
Oh man, I always thought it was just my hypersensitive nose! Glad to hear others can smell sickness. I find it kind of a sour, musky odor in general, with slight variations according to the ailment.
I can also smell when someone has recently been asleep, which is kind of an icky thing. There is definitely a spit odor as well, which can be problematic if I’ve started dating someone, kiss him for the first time, and discover that I can’t stand the smell of his spit. :: shudder ::
Sorry for the slight hijack, but I have to know: can anyone else smell people coming? Not their perfume or b.o. or anything like that, but actually the essence of that person? I creep my boss out at work all the time because we’ll hear the elevator ding down the hall, I’ll sniff the air, and say, “Here comes Lloyd.” I haven’t been wrong yet.
It’s just a . . . spitty smell, that I notice most often when my nose is near the person’s mouth (you can make up the reasons), but sometimes it emanates from the neck/facial area in general, and sometimes (though less often) from the entire person.
There’s a difference between the spit smell and halitosis, but in my experience, the spit smell is a precursor to doody breath if left untreated. My personal theory has always been that the spit smell is a result of slight dry-mouth. I dated a guy who took Ritalin, and it gave him horrible, foamy dry-mouth.
He also had a really strong spit smell.
Take that as you will, but I’m stickin’ with my theory.
Oh, and FWIW, my mom knows the “spit smell” too, because as we were transporting my (at the time) new puppy, Ezra, to her new home with us, we both noticed that she smelled like her momma had cleaned her up for the trip.
My sister and I have both noticed this phenomenon. Years ago, our grandmother’s cat started smelling sort of strange and was diagnosed with cancer shortly afterwards. Only my sister and I had noticed the scent, and we didn’t really think much of it until several years later when my cat started to smell the same way. Sure enough: cancer.
We’ve since noticed people on the bus or on the street with the same odour, but since we didn’t actually go up and ask them if they happened to have cancer, that’s not so much evidence as it is useless information.
Truly, you have Joe Morton’s nose.
Spit. Who would’ve thunk it?
Well, I realize that this thread is old enough that it’s starting to smell a bit all by itself, but I just spotted this article on Yahoo’s Oddly Enough section: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=583&ncid=583&e=20&u=/nm/20030428/od_nm/health_prostate_dc
As neuroman has suggested, if your dog looks at you funny after you take a whizz, it might be something much more serious than that asparagus you ate…
The cancer smell thingy is pretty well known.
I don’t smell it, but I work with a person who does.
And when I come back from chemo, she smells other cancers “on” me. She’s accustomed to my cancer scent, but evidently each cancer smells differently.
Yes sick people smell funny, I know because I have cancer and no one else has said anything but I can smell it on myself. This is the reason that I have come up with.
I have cancer of the adrenal glands, this messes with my hormones where I get fun side effects like acne and mood swings but it also gives me SUPER strength Body Odor…if you can imagine!
Deodorant works but only for a few hours. So please my more husband who has been kind enough not to point out my BO!
Wow, this must be the place for newbies with strange neuro-endocrine cancers.
I have carcinoid.
It pretty well sucks, huh?
Good luck with your treatments.
I work with people suffering from squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck. I will never forget the first time I walked into a clinic room–when the MD and I walked out, he said that we had just smelled cancer. The smell is almost sickeningly sweet combined with musk. The problem is that I can smell it and notice the odor on people–and I know that it is a particularly rapidly spreading cancer so, I find it difficult to restrain myself from trying to warn someone with that smell.