I've been going to Gleneagles for the past week for my industrial training. I was very nervous on the first day, kinda like first day of primary school, really. Funny. I'm already an adult!
I entered the lab, and it was so hectic. People bustling around, from table to table (I later learned that it's called
bench). Machines whirring, lab staffs shuffling around with papers and specimen tubes and bottles. I was told to just stand and observe. Yes,
stand. They don't seem to ever sit in there. I was just an
observer til noon, when I was finally allowed to handle the specimens and forms.
The bench I was placed at is the Labelling bench. It is the first place in the lab where the whole of Gleneagles' patients' bodily specimens are sent for processing. Blood in plain tubes (red-topped tube), tubes with EDTA (purple-topped), tubes with heparin (green-topped), tubes with fluoride (grey-topped), tubes with citrate (light blue-topped). Tubes from private institutions (like Malaysian Liver Foundation) come with white tops. Serums are rarely encountered. Urine containers - don't get me started on the smell. Stool samples - this might sound yucky, but actually, they smell a teeny bit better than the urine samples, whatever color it has, be it brown, brown-so-dark-you-could-say-it's-black, greenish brown, yellowish brown, even orangeish brown. But mind you, I don't purposely open up the sample bottles to
smell them. I'm not that crazy, for God's sake.
We at the Labelling bench also receive semen, smears from cervix, polyps from colons, and not to forget, sputum and pus. We get bloody wound swabs almost everyday.
Do people get injured everyday, and goes to the hospital to complain to the doctor, fearing they'd get tetanus or something?Don't they have antiseptic and Band Aids at home?
My job for this past week is to open up the clear plastic stamped with big, bold letters marking 'BIOHAZARD' containing the specimens, and tally them with the forms they come with. Each patient's sample(s) must be there for the tests required by the kind doctors.
General Admission 1? There must be a plain tube, EDTA tube, and a urine sample.
Test for
HBA1c? Must have EDTA. If not, call up to the ward, and ask for it.
"Hello. I'm Dinie calling from the lab, regarding this patient, a Mr. David Robert Joseph Beckham. You requested for HBA1c test, but we didn't receive any EDTA tube. Could you shoot one down ASAP? Thank you."
*shoot = the act of sending down documents/specimens through the
pneumatic tube, instead of using a porter or a
dumb waiter*
There are also tests that Gleaneagles does not do in-house. Thus, the particular specimens requiring tests that are not available have to be sent out to other places. Like, SLE 2 (we do SLE 1, 'tho I have no idea what's the difference between the two).
There's a whole lot of lists to be memorized. What tests needs what specimens, and what tests need what forms. Haishh. I am very glad that starting next Monday I'm leaving Labelling and moving on to Fluids. There I'll handle all bodily fluids. Pasteur-pipetting urine samples onto slides and counting the WBCs are way more liberating than mindlessly sticking barcode stickers on tubes and bottles, 6 days a week.
The lab staffs are a-okay, I guess. There's this Chinese girl (only been a staff there for 1 month) and a Malay girl (trainee for 1 week) who are kinda
sombong. We're talking, but we don't go to lunch together. They're not
sombong in its sense of word, but more like,
'We came here before you, and we got close. We don't want a new colleague. We're happy with just the two of us.'
Fuck*rs. I can work on my own. You can go lick each other's butt.
Luckily, the other staffs (clerks and MLTs - Medical Lab Technologists alike) are cool. They're willing to stop whatever they're doing at that time to answer my silly questions and whatnot. I appreciate that very much.
Did I say before that Labelling is the most tiring bench for anyone to be at? We have to STAND all day long. No sitting down at all, unless there's a slow time e.g. no incoming specimens to be processed, which is rare.
Because of this, I've been experimenting with what shoes to wear. On Monday, I wore flats, but with not much cushioning for the heels. By lunch hour, my feet are hurting. On Tuesday I wore sneakers, which is quite comfy. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday saw me walking around the lab in again, sneakers.
Today I wore flats again, tired of the sneakers.
If I am to consider a career in labs after graduation, my love for show-y shoes should be suppressed now and I have to learn to take a liking to super-comfy shoes but not that gorgeous to the eyes. But, one of the senior staffs told me that with a degree (without much experience-kinda like me), our basic salary would be RM2100 plus allowance. That's kinda tempting, isn't it? Maybe I can work in a lab, and still love, own and wear my oh-so-gorgeous shoes when I'm not working? Haha. That's just a thought. We'll see how it goes in the future.
I might even land myself a spanking rich hubby and not have to work at all!
Amen.
Heck, I can leave this blog of mine without a single update in 3 months, but when I have something to write about, I tend to ramble on and on. This is me.
p/s: Lately, I've been thinking of the environment a lot. How I can do my bit for Mother Earth. I'm still trying to use less plastic bags when I buy my lunches! I recently did a quiz at Ecological Footprint, and I am surprised with the outcome of the quiz! Apparently, if everyone lived like I do, we would need 2.17 Earths to survive! And I think I'm living quite 'green-ly'. Go on, give it a try. You need to start be an environmentally-conscious human being, if you're not already one. The Arctic polar bears are drowning.
