haven't quit yet

Sorry for going a week without posting. I've been pretty busy! Residency is hard enough on its own, but most of us are still settling into our new homes and trying to learn the city. Oh, and sleeping, sometimes.

I got my first "real" page today (not counting conference reminders and such). A swab made its way to the lab unlabeled. It was in a bag that contained the proper paperwork, but since the swab tube itself was unmarked, it was unacceptable (thanks, trial lawyers!). I had to contact the attending, who told me to tell the nurse to send another swab. So I called the nurse, and he said he'd try to do it if he could. Mission accomplished, I guess.

Speaking of swabs, we once again got an unnecessarily tiny specimen. We heard about a patient with a large abscess in his leg. The lab attending specifically requested a vial of the pus. We got -- yep -- a swab.

Lesson of the day: Do not smell plates that are growing Shigella. It's so infectious that you can get sick from even ten of the little guys. Most bacteria take a few hundred or thousand to inoculate you.

And now, this week's list of bacteria I had never heard of before:
Staphylococcus schleiferi
Moraxella osloensis
Enterobacter cancerogenus
Tsukamurella spp.

I know this is disjointed, but this rotation (and, I think, pathology in general) lends itself toward smaller stories rather than larger, detailed ones. In the next week or two, I hope to do some real posts, explaining what exactly pathologists do, and how the department is getting the new PGY-1s up to speed (they realize we know nothing).