Curse my pale allergic self

At the hospital, we deal with smells. In OB/GYN, we deal with smells. It may reassure you to learn that most OB/GYNs truly do not mind most OB/GYN smells: amniotic fluid, placenta, an open abdomen, various vaginal misfortunes, bodily fluids of many identities, it's all good (although we do enjoy teaching hapless med students about the "whiff test"). In fact, when it comes to medical specialties, we OB/GYNs are pretty resistant to smells that other people gag at.

However, every once in a while, we can't handle it either. I won't go into the details, but there is one smell in particular (or rather a combination of smells) that is very present in one room on our service. In the hospital, when smells are bad, there is this peppermint air freshener that gets used to try to cover them up. It doesn't really work. It just adds peppermint to the combination of smells.

My chapstick is peppermint. I realized this a few days ago when I put it on and had a strongly visceral response to the smell. It was time to get new chapstick.

My new chapstick is cherry. I wore it yesterday. It's tinted, and it made my lips a lovely shade of ping, and it did not make me want to vomit. Win! Today I put it on, and after an hour my lips started to tingle. Then they started to itch. Yup. Looks like I'm allergic to cherry chapstick. But I'm sure not going back to peppermint.