Rolling with the punches

When I started my cadaver lab, my instructor told us how some of her students had become vegetarians after the experience. I didn’t think much of that. It didn’t gross me out very much (aside from the episode where Nellie’s fat landed between my eyes). After a few days the smell wasn’t that bad, and I’m used to cleaning animals that Dad’s hunted, so I could totally handle it.

So we’ve been in the lab every day for hours, becoming intimately acquainted with every little nerve and artery and vein of Nellie’s body. The unfortunate truth is that she is decomposing before our very eyes; faster than we can even dissect. For those of you who aren’t interested in medical things, the only words I can think of to describe it, is horrendously gross, like out of a disgusting horror movie. Tomorrow I’m going to help Dr. Rust amputate her legs to try to stem the spread of mold.

But I was doing fine with it, until I sat down to eat dinner. I had a dish from the cafeteria with rice and cooked beef. As I stirred it around in my bowl I saw a chunk of fat on a piece of meat. Then next to that, a piece of muscular fascia. It looked exactly like the piece of fascia I’d pulled off of Nellie’s thigh. The bones were porous and the sauce the meat was in was nearly the same color as Nellie’s decomposing flesh. I tell you, I’ve never had less of an appetite for something before. But I managed to choke down a bit of it because I was so hungry, before tossing the rest of it into the garbage.

This weekend after a grueling 6-day, 14-hour a day week, I went out with 3 classmates and let off a bit of steam for the evening. (To make a long story short, the end result was throwing up more times in one night than I ever have before). But the next day I slept in and felt fine, then studied inside while hurricane Melissa drenched the island. In the afternoon I took my Sabbath and I walked the 10 kilometers down the muddy dirt roads and back to the nearest beach. I sat watching the surf and the wind bending the palm trees and black clouds rolling in across the ocean, and talked to God.

In the evening we had all been invited to Dr. Gilbert’s house for a BBQ. We sat on the porch of his little verandah and swatted mosquitoes and ate real food for the first time since getting to Antigua. I know it’s just food, but a couple of us were close to tears, we were so blessed. I suppose there’s no way to describe it, but if you ever spend two weeks eating ant-infested rice and moldy bread and greasy chunks of meat that looks like your cadaver, you’ll know what I mean. We ate and laughed and talked as late as was possibly polite.

I thought, it’s good to be alive. It’s hard, and it’s good. You never know what’s going to happen, but it’s always different than expected. I suddenly had a roommate show up yesterday, to my surprise. (She is a new student who has joined our class.) I helped her set up a mosquito net and fell asleep with her still studying late into the night, light on above me. Today I washed laundry and hung it out, then had to rescue it when it started to pour again. Our drains have backed up, so we have to turn the cold shower to a trickle and then wait awhile before flushing the toilet. The water is not drinkable here, but Nikki has a filter and we take turns filling up water bottles and putting them in the fridge.

Dr. Rust, our outrageous Louisianan professor who keeps a shotgun in her truck and told us not to faint in the lab because she wasn’t going to pick us up off the dirty floor, she said to me the other day that the only way to survive here was to learn to “roll with the punches”.

She was absolutely right. Paul said it a little bit differently in the Bible, but the same kind of idea: “…I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” (Phil 4:11)

As for the parrot outside my window that’s really a frog, I decided to stop being annoyed by him and I nick-named him Prince. Since I can’t get rid of him, I might as well make him my friend.

I wish I could share my experiences with you, not the bad ones but the beautiful ones like watching the sun come up in the morning from my porch, and seeing little red lizards skitter over the railing, and laughing together at silly jokes in class. I miss you all a lot.