I don’t remember exactly the details of what I was doing, nor why I was doing the procedure the way I did it. It happened when I was still a lab tech intern—about 17 years ago.
For some reason, I wasn’t wearing any gloves. I was holding a test tube with a sputum at the bottom of the tube, and there was a clear liquid on top of the sputum that I was told to decant by the lab tech.
So my smart-ass self tried to decant the clear liquid off the sink directly— without using any pipette.
I could see the clear liquid (and the sputum) slowly sliding to the end of the tube. I thought that the clear liquid would just separate from the sputum easily. Well, the clear liquid started dripping out of the tube, and I thought I was doing fine…until I noticed that the sputum as well, was about to come out of the test tube! I quickly flipped the tube so I wouldn’t lose the sputum in the sink. Thankfully I didn’t lose the sputum!
BUT…although I saved the sputum from falling into the sink, I found out that the sputum was just “floating” on the palm of my hand! And like I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t wearing any gloves! It was gross—yellowish green slightly gooey sputum just floating on my hand like a jello!
In my attempt to mitigate the disaster, I grabbed the test tube with my other hand, and slowly tried to get the sputum off my hand by putting the mouth of the test tube on the edge of the sputum, hoping that the sputum would just slide off back to the test tube. I guess I was trying to scoop out the sputum using the test tube. It was a process–just imagine trying to put a jello in a small-mouth test tube.
After trying for a few minutes, I was finally successful in putting the sputum back in the test tube. I then handed it to my friend to continue the process.
I ran immediately to another department to sanitize my hand—had to use iodine and alcohol, and had to repeat it 5-8 times!
It did gross me out big time! I definitely learned my lesson after that incident.
Submitted by:
Ferdie Rodriguez
Laboratory Manager
Utah USA
