A Mommy Story

As I mentioned at the beginning of the year, I’ve gone back to school to try my hand at another career switch (which will make at least three since I graduated with my BA in History). This time it’s nursing. To test my abilities, I decided to enroll myself in the ultimate weed-out class: Human Anatomy. To make it even more difficult, it’s an online hybrid class – the lecture portion is online and I come in for a lab period once a week. I made a deal with myself that if I didn’t make it through this class, I’d give up any ideas at continuing on.

Well, now that I’m 1/2 of the way through the class, I think it’s time for an update. Turns out, I’m not too shabby with anatomy. My first two exams I scored an A on, and my first lab practical was also an A. I just took exam 3 on Sunday, and I don’t think I did quite as well. It covered muscles and joints, and well, who knew there were so many damn muscles in the body, each with weird, unpronounceable names?

We also got our first introduction to the human cadavers in the back of the room last week. As expected, the sight of these preserved and prosected bodies didn’t bother me in the slightest bit. In fact, I find them rather fascinating. They had been stripped of their skin and fat, leaving muscles, tendons, nerves and some bone on display, as well as organ structures.

Luckily, no one in my class reacted too strongly either. I heard that one student passed out in another section of the class. The only thing that bothered me was the smell. Oh god, the smell was awful. The preservative used for the cadavers is probably the strongest smelling stuff a person could ever encounter. Breathing it in, I could feel it trying to invade my lungs and preserve them. There is a large fan in the room to ventilate the area, but it doesn’t help when you’re standing right over the body to examine a particular muscle.

I now must shower first thing when coming home from class, also. The smell works its way into anything porous. My clothing, my satchel, and even my hair smells like a cadaver after class.

Still, I’m really enjoying the class, and being able to examine how everything works together on a real human body is a great experience. I’m fully expecting to pass the class at this point and continue on with my studies in nursing. And I now know that smelly dead people don’t bother me, so smelly living ones can’t be that much more difficult to work with, right?