So, since most people give me blank stares or a lot of "uh-huhs" on the phone about what I do in the lab, I figured I would take some pictures and give you all a little Microbiology lesson. 
This is me holding up a throat culture (or maybe a sputum culture). Your respitory tract has a lot of normal flora (meaning a lot of bacteria and yeast that is supposed to be there), so you have to pick out the pathogens on the plate from the normal flora and do different tests on them in order to identify them.
This is me holding up a throat culture (or maybe a sputum culture). Your respitory tract has a lot of normal flora (meaning a lot of bacteria and yeast that is supposed to be there), so you have to pick out the pathogens on the plate from the normal flora and do different tests on them in order to identify them.
Me again working up a bunch of stacks of plates and putting the results in to the computer.
I'm making an "overwhelmed" face because I had to set up 14 senstivity panels (a record according to one of the ladies I work with)...and let me tell you--it was overwhelming but I did it! The sensitivity panels will tell you what the pathogen is and what anti-biotics it is sensitive and resistant to.
Me pipetting for the senstivity panels.
This is Kristine. She is a lot of fun to work with (as you can tell by her waving to the camera) and she has taught me a lot! She not only works seven 10 hour days in a row here at Portneuf Medical, but then she spends a few days up at EIRMC in Idaho Falls. And on some weekends she works down in Tremonton. Whew! I don't know how she does it. 
This is Char and she, too, is a lot of fun to work with! She ended up here in Idaho by taking a road trip many years ago from Minnesota and ended up here. I'm glad she did so I could get to know her. :)
Above are reagents for the Gram stain. We use this stain to somewhat narrow down what we're looking for with bacteria. We use it when we first get samples in (wound samples, sputums, throat samples, etc.) and roll it onto the slide, or we do a Gram stain on a culture from the plates that we want to identify. 
First we put the sample on the slide and let it dry. Then we set the slides on this bridge and flood the slides with the first stain and let it sit for one minute...
...then you rinse off the slide with tap water...
...then flood slides with the second stain for one minute, rinse, then squirt slides with a decolorizer (the third reagent in the tray), rinse, put the last stain on for one minute, rinse, dry, then view under the microscope.
I took this picture through the microscope. What you see are "gram positive cocci". There are gram postive (purple), gram negative (pink), and gram variable organisms (varies). And then there are cocci (spheres), bacilli (rods), and other shapes that I won't go into (those are just our main ones). Staphylococcus aureus (which includes MRSA), Streptococcus pyogenes ("Strep throat" or "Group A Strep"), and Streptococcus agalactiae ("Group B Strep"--screened in pregnant women) are all examples of gram positive cocci. :)
Above is another picture I took through the microscope. The purple things are the gram positive cocci and the pink things are gram negative bacilli (or rods). E. coli is an example of a gram negative rod. These are some of the things I look for under the microscope to give us some idea of what kind of bacteria we're dealing with.
Above is a culture plate of Pseudomonas aeruginosa--one of my favorite "bugs". It is a resistant bacteria that can cause some pretty serious infections. I like it because I like saying the name and it smells like grape on the culture plate. :)
And this is the three of us. We are holding up plates in which we wrote our names with different bacteria and let it grow:
This plate says "Staph Char aureus". This is a MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus) positive culture on a Sheep Blood Agar.
This plate says "Staph Char aureus". This is a MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus) positive culture on a Sheep Blood Agar.
This plate says "Kristine Hodson". This organism is Micrococcus grown on Sheep Blood Agar. It is very yellow! Today I wrote my name in Chinese with Micrococcus and I will see how it turns out tomorrow!
And if you didn't guess already, this says "Jamie" with a flower above it. This culture is E. coli (another one of my favorite "bugs"--I had it once as a kid so I have enjoyed learning about it because of that, plus it grows such a pretty pink!). So this is the end of your Microbiology lesson. I have moved on to Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine now for the next two weeks. I was sad to leave Micro because it is my favorite department and the ladies are so much fun to work with. But I am excited to learn more about Blood Banking!
Now on to something sweet. Julie called me last week and told me about this AMAZING sale at Winco for strawberries: 4lbs for $2.99! Limited to one per customer though, so Kenny and I each got in line with one. So the next morning before work I made jam!
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I use the Ball brand in the packets because you use about 1/3 of the sugar and it's not as sweet (I actually like it kind of tart). YUM!