Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Bad student, wife, mother, employer, that's me.

While in line for my pre-class coffee yesterday, I ran into a girl who has my same biology class, but in the morning. I asked how lab went that day, and she told me they dissected a fetal pig. The smell was worse than the worst spoiled pork dipped in formaldahyde you could ever imagine, and at that idea, I wretched a little. (Just a little, nobody noticed.)

I decided if I was going to make it through the day, I needed to buy some vaporub (to shove up my nose) and a nose/mouth mask to cover the smell. So I drove to the drug store, sat in the parking lot, and had a full-blown panic attack. I had to force myself to breathe, my neck got really tight, and all of my limbs started timgling from either epinephrine or lack of oxygen. I sat there paralized for about fifteen minutes.

Then I decided I couldn't do it. I can handle (sort-of) individual animal parts, but a whole pig, with hair and eyeballs and intestines full of digested amniotic fluid, I can't do. Then I had another panic attack at the thought of having to study even harder to make up for the fact that I was skipping the lab. Fifteen minutes later, when my vision returned, I drove myself down to the Indian Casino, smoked and played the slot machine for an hour and got myself calmed down enough to come home. And then I lied to my babysitter and my husband about it.

I feel like crap.

The End