The clinic sent a patient home with a standard stool collection kit. Nothing unusual. The next morning, the patient walks back in, clutching a large brown paper bag like it was a newborn kitten. She approaches the receptionist, holds the bag out carefully, and says:
“Here’s my stool specimen.”
The receptionist hesitated. Nobody wanted to be the one to open that bag. Everyone just stared at it like it was ticking.
Finally—braver than the rest—the phlebotomist steps forward.
She slowly opens the top of the bag… and immediately realizes something is very, very wrong.
Inside is not a labeled specimen cup.
Not even a sealed biohazard bag.
Nope.
The patient had brought back the entire urine collection hat, filled to the brim with liquid diarrhea, sloshing around loose inside the paper bag like some kind of disaster smoothie.
The phlebotomist’s face went green instantly.
She leaned back, gagging, eyes watering.
“It smells like C. diff,” she choked out, barely holding herself together.
And that was it—our phlebotomist was done.
She couldn’t eat for the rest of the day.
The whole lab was traumatized.
And nobody ever trusted an innocent-looking brown paper bag again.
Submitted by:
Heidi Perez
Medical Laboratory Technician
New Mexico, USA
