To wonder how people can cope with smells worse than this!?

This?!?

We had to rip out built in cupboards due a dead mouse!

I can confirm durian tastes as bad as it smells. I bought some because everyone said it was delicious. Er no.

I (Paramedic) went to a mentally ill alcoholic who had urine of various ages in bowls, glasses and bottles throughout the house, the floor, walls and toilet were covered with diarrohea. There was a lovely community first responder at scene who prewarned me, but even so I walked in, walked out again, took a deep breath, composed myself and went back in, my eyes where literally stinging and watering.

We had a regular caller 'the reverand' who was a chronic alcoholic and wholey unpleasent man, but to his credit he did try to make healthy dietary choices when he was soberish, the problem was he'd always pick up alcohol at the same time, and depending how desperate he was for the drink would determine how far past the front door his shopping made it, and therefore there would be food in various states of decomposition throughout the downstairs. He was particularly fond of brassicas.

But in 20 years the longest deceased person I've been to is only 5 days, so I think I'm doing well there!

We had that in my old workplace, too. It was a very old building with lots of little gaps, we couldn't work out where it was. Once the smell finally went the flies all hatched. How many flies can emerge from a dead mouse? The answer is way more than you are thinking.

Do you not think you have a duty of care to report this? Or are they an adult?

In the early 80s we lived in a place with a working tannery.

Now I will admit I gave not smelled gangrene so I don't know about that but I have smelled various kinds of dead and decomposing things, including a dead rat in the house and a manky potato. None of it comes close to the smell of that tannery. I can only assume people who work in them quickly lose their sense of smell otherwise I have no idea how they do it.

Next door we have an elderly lady who has carers, lets just say that the ‘waste’ wasn’t emptied in a timely manner. I assumed adult nappies, wet wipes etc.
This was during one of the heatwaves. Awfully sad situation, eventually one of her relatives cleaned the bin. Obviously couldn’t say anything but couldn’t have the front windows open for a few days.

I had this when I was on the skyline at Alton towers. Young girl was sharing the same pod who absolutely reeked of BO. Then it broke down and we were suspended over the lake for 15 mins with this intense smell in a hot glass box. Was never so relieved to smell fresh air when we got out!

Nasty smells get trapped in your sinuses or something, which is why you can still smell them hours later.
Living in Canada I'd give a vote for skunk being the worst smell ever. It's so bad my DOG threw up when she got sprayed.

I thought I was pretty robust when it comes to smells: faced pressure sores with a smile, people who’ve shit themselves etc. and looked after the deceased.

The worst one was opening a lead lined coffin that contained the purifying remains of someone who’d been repatriated to the UK after passing away on holiday.
Dealt with lots of bodies in varying stages of decay but that was something else.

At least with smells like that at work you can leave them behind, a dead rodent in your house is inescapable and horrible!

My dining room stank for ages. After hunting around found a sprout decomposing. Must have rolled off the table and under a bookcase.

Had the poor soul not been embalmed?

Last year we had loads of bluebottle type flies in our conservatory every morning for at least a week. I thought was a drain so cleaned those yet still they persisted. Eventually, I pulled everything out to get to the inspection covers, lifting the loose carpet to do so. Utterly riddled with maggots. And a single dead mouse that had somehow got under it and probably been trapped and squashed. Sorted all that and all was well. But christ, the single dead mouse had a lot of fans after it had died.

There was a youngish woman in Tesco yesterday. Nicely dressed etc but she had this really odd smell coming from her. Can’t define it but it hit me so that I had to step away. Weird.

I'd be inclined to say No.

Far TMI, but anyone who has ever lost or forgotten a tampon in situ will know that those create quite an aroma after a while 🤢 (It happened to me many decades ago, and I certainly never let it happen again!)

He could have been a bar back or brewery worker? The bar backs at my work always used to reek of stake beer but they weren't drinking it.

Coupled with him being a smoker and he's just finished a shift?

Yes, my Mum had rats come into a work building, she called the pest control people who used poison, but a rat die under the floor in a place that was totally inaccessible. They couldn’t take the floor up. It stank for ages, over a year, and even a couple of years later there was this faint smell.
We sometimes get bank voles coming in, we had one die seemingly under our floorboards, DH took up large sections of floor, it happens now and again and he always locates the corpse, there is glass fibre insulation under there and they nest in it and then it kills them 😥 but it had died inside the actual wall, in a gap in the mortar. 200 year old walls. So we just had to close the door and not use the room for a month.

Nope.

It was about 7 years ago and I remember there was a massive faff over how the deceased had been handled after death and it was from a country that wasn’t a ‘normal’ holiday destination.

At least I could escape the various smells, I had a rat die under the floorboards in one of my bathrooms and that was worse cos I couldn’t go home and leave it behind!

Took ages to find it 🤢

Something died in the back of our airing cupboard. But it was behind the wall so we couldn't remove it. The smell lasted for weeks.

Re your penultimate sentence "the smell was like shit and death and foist mixed together." What is foist? If it's a typo for something I haven't been able to work out what.

I was in the hospital on plastic surgery outpatients last week and suddenly the room we were in was filled with the most sickening stench. It was like a combination of faeces and vomit. The nurse explained that a patient in the next room was having dressings changed and the wound had become necrotic. The smell was travelling through the air vents.
No wonder Covid spread so easily in hospitals if air can move between rooms so easily!

I raise you a corneal surface ablation.

You get that smell of fried bluebottle coming from your own eye.

The pain is ..... considerable ... once the anasthetic wears off but the smell was shocking.