"I've Had Worse"

Two weeks of the 18-week internship down, and that's what one of my training techs said when someone asked how I was doing. I have neither harmed nor killed anyone, so "I've had worse" is not exactly how I'd sum up my experience so far.

I've spent eight days on the modulars, which is a fancy way to say multiple instruments that are connected to each other in a line. The mods run a ton and a half of chemisty tests, like glucose and sodium and cholesterol, but also things like therapeutic drug levels, for instance, seizure medications. The most intimidating things in modular chemistry were the first few times I had to call the ER or a doctor's office to report seriously out of whack results and sitting at the helm, managing data on three computer screens.

Today I moved out of modular chemistry and onto two smaller analyzers. It was a pretty smooth day, since I've really got a handle on the lab computer system already, and these two analyzers run significantly fewer tests and in much smaller volume. The coolest thing is probably the blood gas analyzer. You use this tiny little plastic tube adapter and it just sucks blood in and shoots results out the other side: slick. (Okay, it may be slightly more complicated than that, but not much.)

My shining moment today was locating a specimen that was MIA, and two different departments were waiting for it. According to my training tech, I was, "as the French say, kicking ass." And that is how I would sum it up, too.