That Would Be the Distinctive Smell of Decomp

Once again, I begin with an apology for being a such a sporadic blogger. If you don't know (or haven't guessed) I am finally employed. I was afraid to blog when the job prospect first fell into my lap. And it did literally fall into my lap. I was reading on my favorite couch right by the door and the Vansome came home all excited and dropped some papers in my lap. It was the job description for a position at the hospital/medical school where his co-worker Tony moonlights as a Med Tech. Tony had been offered the job but wasn't interested, so he passed it on to me. It was so perfect that I was terrified of jinxing it, plus you always hear about employers passing on applicants after reading their blogs, so I kept quiet. Cyber quiet, anyway. I was telling anybody and everybody in real life.

I love my job. I miss being home, and I miss my domestic schedule, but I love what I'm doing. I'm in administration, which is different, but I'm still in pathology, which is familiar enough to off-set the weirdness of a desk job. I do miss being directly involved in the actual work, though. I really enjoyed shopping for a professional wardrobe. I absolutely love the hospital I work for. I volunteered there the summers I was 13 and 14. It's also my alma mater. The school, not the hospital, but they're pretty well intertwined. It feels like home.

I took The Boy up this morning to show him around. I've been wanting to do it ever since I got there, but we've been so busy on the weekends. He was marginally impressed with my office and the Pathology Department as a whole. We poked around in the Gross Room, but without anyone there, it was less than interesting. Grossing tables and stain lines and machines are pretty boring by themselves. The buckets of parts (parts is parts) piqued his interest, but you can't really make out much after they've been sliced and diced. It's just a bucket of murky liquid with indistinct solid pieces floating around.

The highlight of the day was the morgue. It was open so I was able to really show him around. He loved every minute he was there. He saw everything except an actual autopsy, and I've asked to be called the next time we have one over the weekend so he can watch that as well. I'm looking forward to that myself, as I've wanted to watch one since I was a student and I keep missing out for one reason or another.

We do alot of brain studies so the walls are lined with buckets of brains. It is a fascinating sight. I let him peek inside the cooler, too. Surprisingly, it looks about like the walk-in refrigerator we used at Chili's, only smaller. We let the coroner use it when he needs to, so it's rarely empty. The Boy has now experienced the unforgettable, undeniable, unmistakeable odor of human decomposition. CSI would not be as popular if you could smell what you were seeing. The Boy was beside himself, and completely renewed in his desire to practice medicine. I may have to haul him into the morgue every weekend to keep him focused on his goals.