Shayne Ward – No Promises

Night shift yesterday was horrendous.

Generally, biochemistry lab is split into two halves. The front is where reception is and the back is where all the analysers and blardy cant-stop-ringing phones are. Both halves are divided by the awfully long winding track.

Basically, you cannot get from one half to another without having to make a huge detour around the track. All of us wish we can cut a path down middle of the huge track so we don’t have to all get varicose veins. Some of the younger ones have contemplated jumping from one side to another before.

And I so wanted to yesterday.

The back was so busy yesterday I barely had time to go over to reception to help my partner. Our useless neighbours next door glued themselves firmly to their chairs at their side while we slogged like horses to order both our samples and theirs.

My partner started her way of silent protest by refusing to help them order their samples. I simply sat very still and remained rooted to the ground whenever the emergency alarm screeched for attention.

Whoever cant take the screeching first will have to go get the samples. And of course, I win hands down (no fight man) and get to watch them lan lan go get the samples. Cheap thrill but nevertheless, still fun to watch.

There was an urgent sample for tacrolimus at 5 plus am amidst the mountain of samples from all the ICUs. I rushed my ass off to get the pretreatment done:

*Pipette 200ul of QCs and patient sample to eppendorf tube.
*Pipette 50ul tac pretreatment.
*Pipette 200ul methanol.
*Vortex till homogenous.
*Incubate at room temperature, min 2 minutes.
*Spin down at 10800rpm, 5 minutes.

Last step. Decant supernatant into cobas eppendorf and load to run.

A chain of expletives escaped my mouth when I decanted out the precious few drops of supernatant to find them dripping onto the table.

The harmless looking eppendorf actually had a huge hole at the bottom. epitome of suay-ness.

Terrible night(mare).