Alternate world products.

When I was in the hospital, and checked into my room (so to speak), I was given a little courtesy bowl full of things to help keep up appearances. Soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, antiperspirant, etc., all branded with names you never heard of, like they dropped in from an alternate world. Yet I was very pleased by this. I had heard from an unlucky traveler who was injured abroad that in Romania the hospitals don't even feed you; if you want to eat, your family has to bring you food. (Since she was traveling alone, this put her in a sticky situation, as you might guess.)

I wasn't allowed to shower, with my back in such awful shape, but I definitely used that toothpaste and brush. And I have to tell you, it was the second nastiest toothpaste I ever tried.

Freshmint was the "brand," and I use "scare quotes" because I doubt it ever finds its way onto American shelves. I think it is sold particularly for hospitals and other institutions, and the little tubes can be purchased online in bulk. The label said it was made in India. Perhaps our Indian friends have different preferences in toothpaste flavor. This tasted like mint-flavored cardboard. But it was much better than nothing, and better by far than the awful Burt's Bees crap I paid money for.

The little soap I took home; there were soap dispensers at the bathroom sink, so I never used it.

"Freshscent"

Ditto the antiperspirant; I figured it would be thrown away if I didn't take it, so why not? A memento of my little sojourn.

How do they smell? Like the hospital. That is, I think all the ambulatory patients, and probably half the staff, use this stuff for the same reason I took it -- otherwise it would go to waste. So it makes sense that the whole place would smell like this and not, say, Dial or Axe. It's a pleasant enough scent and not overpowering, like baby powder. Oddly enough, the Freshscent products seem to be made in the USA, although the branding is quite similar to the toothpaste. There are questions about the supply chain that can only be answered by distributor New World Imports, and I haven't time to pester them right now.

Finally, there was the shampoo, or shall I say baby shampoo and body wash, which tells us what we ought to know about shampoo -- that it too is soap:

MedSpa does not come to us from NWI, but rather is a product of Medline, the company that makes Curad bandages and plenty of other medical supplies. This made-in-the-USA shampoo/soap smells pretty good too, a sort of generic soapiness, like a slightly stronger bubble-wand soap. It's just OK, but it got me clean, and after four days and change without a shower that's the key to quality, you ask me.

So that's my experience with hospital loot. I never opted for a pair of the grippy socks, nor did I try to take the charming split-back gown home. I never get invited to those red-carpet events anyway.