Job Dislikes

Do you have a part of your job that you absolutely hate?? I DO! And I feel like talking about it because I hate it so much that I want you all to know about it :) Also, I'm talking about it because i'm in the middle of doing this ALL DAY today, then on Tuesday, then 5 more times over the next three weeks!

So up until this past November I was a full time lab technician in our Allergy/Asthma/Pulmonary research lab. I wasn't too happy doing this anymore so I was 'promoted' to do half lab and half regulatory/IRB work, which is more administrative. Love it! Love doing the paperwork and handling research study consents and administration.

But of course i'm still doing some lab things. One of those things is processing lung biopsies that we collect from our research subjects. Collecting these is kinda fun because I get to go in while the doctors are doing the bronchscopy and collect the tiny little pieces of lung that the docs pull out. http://www.ehealthmd.com/library/bronchoscopy/BSC_whatis.html

Then the crap part begins when I have to bring them back into the lab and over the next three days, 'process' them or change them into different solutions, that become more toxic as each day goes on until on Day 3 when I have to embed them into glycolmethacrylate or GMA. http://www.abcam.com/index.html?pageconfig=resource&rid=11464

IT SUCKS! I hate working with chemicals that dangerous and its very toxic. I have to wear two pairs of gloves and do the procedure in a fume hood. Today i'm on day 2 of this and have to change solution every two hours for the rest of the day. The last lady that had to do this procedure all the time died of stage 4 breast cancer this past year. Now, I'm not so naive that I think this work caused her to have cancer BUT, it even says on the bottle of all these chemicals that females of child bearing potential shouldn't be working with this stuff. Of course yes I take a lot of care in working with this stuff and protect myself as much as I can but still! SO YA, not real happy about this. And lucky for me I have 5 more of these in the next three weeks! The week of June 23rd I have three, Monday, Wednesday and Friday so if I seem on edge, that is why!

Thanks for listening :)