Category: LOL Moments

As most labs do, we celebrated lab week with a lunch and cake celebration. I went to pick up the cake and the girl at the bakery brought it to the counter and showed me the cake which had "Happy lab week' iced across the top. She commented 'that's so cool, I didn't even know… Continue reading Lab Week

You know how you would say to a little girl that she does so well with her blood draw tell her, “You’re such a big girl now!”. Apparently, there are times this doesn’t apply. Here’s another embarrassing story on my journey. I was drawing blood from a nice lady, and she does feel a little… Continue reading Big Woman

I used to work for a high volume Trauma Center and I had gotten a call from one of the medical residents in regard to a patient bleeding on the floor. The phone call came about 30 minutes after she placed order for 6 superpacks of irradiated platelets. Now we generally only keep 4 units,… Continue reading Inventory Issue

One day as I walked in to the lab, I saw a pregnant lady crying inside our draw room. She said her car was broken into and the only thing that was stolen was a wine bottle in a brown paper bag. It turns out, that's where she was keeping her urine sample, which she'd… Continue reading Instant Karma

A nurse brought a urine specimen to the laboratory.  Even though we have a paperless electronic system, the specimen came with a paper order that says “Hospitality” on it as the level of care. Nothing too suspicious about it until we ran the sample.  Urine dipstick came up with +3 Glucose and Trace Blood.  Microscopically,… Continue reading Lab Week Prank

Went to our skilled nursing facility to draw blood on one of the residents. I usually engage on a conversation with my patients just to be friendly and keep them at ease. While talking to my patient, he then asked me if I was going to sell his blood. Told him no. Couldn’t really tell… Continue reading Bloody Mary

Ah yes, the urgent blood culture. I shall just speak to the germs and ask if they would mind growing quicker, or that we will use the special incubator that makes bacteria grow faster. I did tell a physician once that was demanding an urgent blood culture that I would put in in the microwave… Continue reading Urgent Blood Culture

I worked at a pediatric cancer center. One night we received a urine sample from one of our patients. We ran the sample on the analyzer and the glucose was greater than 500 mg/dl. We run a Clinitest and there is so much sugar, it caused a "pass through." We immediately began to panic so… Continue reading The Urine That Wasn’t

We have a big class of over 150 students. Imagine 150 interns in this huge laboratory run mostly by student interns under the supervision of a few licensed medical technologists. It was fun and never without a few pranks here and there. It was customary for the previous year's interns to prank the newbies. My… Continue reading Special Ingredient

I just started a my new job in Anatomic Pathology at my current hospital. I was there maybe 2 weeks, new supervisor just learning the way things are done. Evidently, before I arrived, the pathology department was willing to release specimens back to patients once the report was finalized. A HUGE no no since they… Continue reading He Bit What Off???