Lab Mishaps

I will tell a few stories of lab mishaps that occurred during my 2 year stint working in a Nutritional Science lab at Cal.

First of all, working in that lab was one of the greatest experiences in my life. I got to see how an academic lab did things. And I got to meet some of the coolest people who are still good friends to this day, INCLUDING, my noona or Big Sis, Alice C.

Ok, so the first mishap isn't really that bad. I was chillin in the lab talking with another lab assistant. What I didn't notice was a liquid nitrogen dewer (container) that was sitting right next to my leg. I was sitting on one of those swivel chairs and when I moved to one side, I knocked it over. The sound I heard from this act was quite possibly the loudest glass explosion ever. It literally sounded like a softball sized meteor came crashing through a large plate glass window.

We freaked out and kinda just froze. Within seconds, the Professor ran into the room and with his French accent asked, "what zee hell happoned?" The other guy with me quickly responded, "Oh, sorry Jean Marc, the dewer just exploded for no reason. We don't know how it happened."
He said, "ok" and walked away. I'm not sure if he believed us but oh well, we cleaned it up and continued talking.

The next mishap involves me almost permanently damaging my left hand. I was working in a fume hood with some samples that I needed to add a strong acid to (12 normals). I was in a hurry and only needed to add the acid to a few samples. I put one glove on my right hand, took the acid out of the refrigerator, placed it in the fume hood and proceeded to add the acid to the samples. Everything was going well until I finished adding the acid to the last sample. Remember, I was doing this with one hand. So, as I'm moving to close the acid bottle, my hand accidentaly knocks over the bottle. I instinctively grabbed for it with my left hand and the resulting jolt caused the acid to splash onto my hand. At first I thought, "oh shit. What do I do?"
That thought was quickly replaced with , "HOLY FUCKING SHIT, MY HAND IS BURNING!"
I bounded towards the sink and quickly started to flush my hand with cold water. The other lab assistant saw what happened and quickly poured baking soda on my hand. Lucky for me, I didn't lose any skin. It just burned. Well, a few days later, my hand started to turn brown and then yellowish. And then the skin peeled. It was kinda gross and cool at the same time. I never, ever used strong acid after that without wearing gloves on both hands.

The last incident is probably the grossest thing that has ever happened to me. While working in the lab, I applied for a grant to study glucose flux using acetominaphen as a marker. The patients would ingest some stuff and then we would detect how much of it got processed in the body by measuring the amount of stuff that was not utilized and therefore excreted. The way I was to test this was to measure the patients pee pee. First, I would have to pass the pee pee through a filter using a syringe. Everything was going as planned, in this particular instance. Then I got the sample that would change my life. I was trying to filter the pee but it was being really stubborn. What I later discovered was that if a bubble of air gets in the filter during the process, it clogs. I didn't know this at the time so I kept pressing, and pressing, and pressing until..... pop. Pee on my face. Yes, I got motherfucking piss on my face. Lucky for me, none of it made it into any orifice located on my head. I went to the sink, turned the faucet on, and stuck my head under it for a good 5 minutes. I dried myself off and went back to work. I was much more careful from that point on.