True Love

Have you ever been in love?

Today I got to work alone in the lab. I was bopping around the microbiology section all by myself, reading plates, releasing results and jamming to some good tunes. It was lovely. Now while I was looking at cultures and getting them on their way, I was reminded why I love this field so much. No matter what happens, it’s never boring. There are days when it can seem somewhat routine and repetitive, but to me, it’s never dull.

Every day, new cultures come in and it’s a great mystery if they will grow something interesting or not. Sometimes they are loaded with many different bacteria. Sometime what grows is pathogenic and sometimes it’s non-pathogenic. Sometimes the plates are barren. Either way, you never know what you are going to get. It’s my job to decide based on the type of culture what is important and what is not. Some people never understand this, but for me, I love it.

Bacteria are never boring either. Each one is unique unto itself. They have their own personalities. They have their own favourite foods. They can be finicky or agreeable. Sometimes they follow the rules, and sometimes they don’t. For me, they are one of the most interesting and fascinating creatures that we share this beautiful planet with. They’re so tiny, we can’t see them, but they are ubiquitous and can bring us to our knees on occasion.

While I was having myself a little party today in the lab, I started reminiscing about my first experience in a microbiology laboratory. I was going to school in Hawaii because that’s where my ex-husband was stationed and we were living at the time. When we first got married, we agreed that he would work and I wouldn’t and as a result, I spent a year at home being a housewife. After that year and during his deployment to the Middle East, I realized that staying home was great, but it just wasn’t me. I got beyond restless, bored and simply did not fit in with the other wives who were busy turning out children like lemmings and were completely content to wait patiently day-by-day for their husbands to come home to tell them what to do. I was also worried on some level that my husband at the time might not come home from deployment and I would then have to support our family that we didn’t have yet.

So one night after receiving some very bad news, I started to really examine my life at that time. I was happy being a wife yet I knew deep down that I didn’t want to be just someone’s wife and possibly somebody’s mother. I simply wanted and needed to do more with my life, but I wasn't sure what that was. I thought about my previous careers and had always intended on finishing my degree so I looked into going back to school. After a few weeks, I had managed to get myself into a nursing program because I had always liked healthcare and wanted to help people. I had started taking courses to supplement what I already had taken at UNM so I could start my nursing practicum. One of the courses I enrolled in was a basic microbiology course. Now, I had taken science courses before, but none of them were quite like this one.

I remember the first few weeks of the course quite vividly. I didn’t know what to expect. Our professor was incredibly nice and thorough as she walked us through basic microbiology. Everything was on petri dishes. The lab smelled awful, but it didn’t matter. The more I studied, the more intrigued I was by this field that I hadn’t really given much thought to previously. I would read my text and then look stuff up on the computer. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn. The more I learned, the more I realized how prolific microbes are in our lives. Whether we take notice of them or not, they were here first and they continue to touch our lives in some of the most famous and mundane ways. Case in point, just about everyone has heard of the Black Plague and the Spanish flu, right?

Well, one day after one of our tests, the professor asked me to stay for a minute because she needed to talk to me. I, of course, thought I was in trouble for something! Thankfully I wasn’t. Turns out she wanted to hire me to be her laboratory aide because I was, as she said, one of the best students she had ever had in her 20 years of teaching. I was flabbergasted and didn’t really understand what she expected of me, but she explained what I would be doing so I took job on the spot. I walked out of her office feeling elated because her course was my absolute favourite and I was sad that it was ending.

The next semester, I wasn’t taking microbiology, but I was working in the back making sure the students had what they needed for the laboratory section of the course. My duties included setting up media, preparing all stock cultures and decontaminating pretty much everything. I learned how to make all sorts of media including slants and agar plates. I had to monitor all stock cultures every day. I even learned how to run an old school autoclave that I affectionately named Bertha, BIG Bertha. I had found my Shangri-La and it was in the laboratory.

Ever since that job, my very first job in microbiology, I spent the last 13 years of my life in a laboratory at some capacity or another, be it as a tech or a teacher. I gave up nursing to pursue my degree in microbiology after that semester. Making that decision has been one of the best I have ever made in my life, and I have never looked back. Even when my life fell apart and my marriage ended, I knew in the back of my mind, I was going to be a microbiologist.

I finished my degree at UNM in the spring of 2002 and secured a job working for the NM State Dept of Health laboratory. On my first day of work, it was as if I had died and gone to heaven. The miracle had happened. I WAS a microbiologist. I remember walking around that lab on my first day of work in a daze with a happy grin on my face all day long. I was working with dangerous bacteria like rabies and tularemia, STD’s like syphilis and chlamydia, viruses and every other type of pathogenic bacteria known to man. I should have been a bit scared, but I wasn't. I was in pure bliss.

So these days my career has changed speeds a bit and I no longer work there or at any of the other labs I trained in, but somehow I find myself right back where I started: in a laboratory. What’s funny is I still get a thrill and have to smile a bit when I walk into any laboratory and see those stacks of plates waiting for me. I love what I do and I do what I love. Is there any better existence?

Have you ever been in love before?