Author: Nina Schjelderup

I was on my morning rounds when coming to an elderly lady all tucked up under the duvet (comforter). I presented myself and asked to collect her blood. This was a few years ago, so I don't remember what came first - the moist hand (could be from just being warm under the duvet ...)… Continue reading Bedside Confession

I had just been to one ward drawing blood from a multihandicapped patient and had had to almost tie a knot of myself in order to reach in. It was a challenging pose but I made it successfully, and went on to the next ward. Here was a male patient about my own age, fairly… Continue reading Double Meaning

I was working in a specialized lab dealing with coagulation disorders for a decade. Once someone from another lab or doctor's office called me wanting the fiks analysis (Norwegian spelling). "Fiks?", I answered hesitantly, "We don't have any analysis called that." Took me quite a little while to understand it was coagulation factor 9 (F… Continue reading Fixed It!

When I was fresh out of school and had just started my new job as biomedical lab. scientist, one of my tasks was to manually count leukocytes in spinal fluid. We used a blue powder which was located in a small brown bottle on a shelf above the work bench. This bottle had a screw… Continue reading Blue Monday