Midterms & Schwann Sells Pizza

I had my Ethel come to help me study for midterms last week. It was nice even just having someone else to tell me I can do it when I'm stressing or to make me laugh when my brain starts hurting.

When I threw myself across the bed & announced, "I'm dead. This class killed me." She didn't even look up from her phone & The Facebook. She just reached across & tickled me. When I yelled at her for making a dead woman laugh, her answer was, "I revived you." And back to The Facebook she went.

Clearly there was no throwing temper fits around this woman. Dang her. She obviously misunderstood what "study with me" meant.

When I study, I say things out loud because it helps it stick in my head, instead of just reading it. At one point I said, "Schwann cells..." before I could even finish the sentence she said, "Pizza and ice cream."

That little butthead...seriously...when a question about Schwann cells was on the midterm, what went through my head? "Schwann sells pizza & ice cream...and Schawann cells provide..." And I got the question correct. Her brain may work in weird ways but for the first time it helped. I will always remember the 2 types of Schwann whenever I hear that word again.

Source

One of these was on my test...both of them were in my head.

Of course, no amount of studying with Ethel is complete without snorting. Not the bad kind of snorting where things go up our nose. But the kind where she laughs till she has tears & I laugh till I snort. I swear her goal some days is to make me snort so she can make fun of me.

At one point when I snorted from laughing so hard our conversation was something like:

Me: "Seriously, I am sick of snorting when I laugh. I'm getting my septum fixed."

Ethel: "Your septic??"

Me: "My septum!!"

Ethel: "Your rectum??"

Me: "My SEPTUM!!"

Oh, dear Lord, confusing the rectum with the septum...I'm so grateful she has no desire to go into medicine. Not only does she run away retching & covering her ears & eyes when someone just happens to take their Taco Bell Owie & open it up to show the internal parts of a finger (you know, hypothetically of course, 'cause I don't know anyone that would actually do that), but she doesn't know the inside of the butt from the inside of the nose.

Makes me curious how she took her babies' temperature when they were sick. When the nurse told her to put the thermometer in the rectum, was she working herself into a frenzy trying to get into the middle of their little noses? Was she wondering why it kept fogging up from their breath & why her babies' temps were always lower than normal?

And this is who I chose to help me study a class about body parts. At least it's never a boring study session when she's involved.