Wednesday, December 10, 2008

A new lab to visit

Occasionally I get to do something new and different, and today it was to visit Kaiser's clinical lab where they run all the blood, urine and clinical tests for the Bay area. I have never been in a clinical lab. Lots of automation, lots of ice chests on conveyor belts, lots of vials of bodily fluids lined up with different colors of caps, piles and stacks of test tube racks. Lots of tracking systems and piles of print-outs. Identical instruments in rows, and then more rows of another kind of instrument. Machines to do stuff that people do in other kinds of labs I visit. I was at the State of CA forensic lab a couple of weeks ago, and that manager told me the cops run a drug panel on everyone stopped for a suspected DUI, in the event they are driving under the influence of something other than alcohol even if they are not legally drunk. My client today had a row of instrument that run opiates in urine from people in rehab. I didn't know they tested people in rehab, although it makes sense. This was a pretty big lab as labs go, about the size of an averagely large grocery store. I now have 2 jobs on my list from hell - working at an environmental testing lab and working at a clinical lab. No fun to run the same thing over and over and over and over and . . . Life could be worse, Lenore.

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