Monday, May 5, 2008

Instant food poisoning

Ah, the fun we have! Today we had a practical class requiring us to culture the bacteria from our mouths on agar plates. It's quite a simple process, but a bit uncomfortable for those of us with a strong gag reflex [insert joke here] because the swab has to be brushed across the tonsils to get the really good stuff. Brings tears to the eyes. It's funny though because I didn't have any awareness of the swab actually touching my tonsils, just a memory of the overwhelming feeling of my stomach trying to climb out of my mouth for no apparent reason.

Unfortunately, one group stuffed up. Instead of moistening the swab in saline to help it pick up the bacteria from our mouths, they moistened the swab in a liquid culture of E. coli which had been rather idiotically left in the same tube rack as the saline solution. So instead of culturing the bacteria from their good friend, they actually infected him with a dose of E. coli. Whoops!

Once he gets off the toilet he's really going to get them good.

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