[support] separation of body from cck fields?

Hi guys, I finally figured out how to get at the CCK field values I've created and output them onto the page. But when I output $content or $body it contains the content of the extra fields as well - not only that but it's all in one string so I can't even grab the bits I need as I can from an Array. Is there any way to access the information the person typed into the description field without anything else? thanks