You may be a Medical Lab Scientist if...

You may be an MLS if…


  1. Most people have the shirt drawer, the pants drawer, the underwear drawer. You have these too, but you also have a drawer dedicated to scrubs
  2. At-work-discussions have led to a coworker saying, “My platelet count always runs low. I mean, I don’t have any thrombocytopenic symptoms, it’s always just hanging out down by the bottom limit.”
  3. A coworker has said you have a bruise. “Yeah, it doesn’t surprise me. My PT is about 12.7. All the time.”
  4. You know things about yourself that would usually only be tested in severe organ failure (yes, I know my K-value, my protein electrophoretic pattern, what my blood looks like under Kleihauer-Betke stain, and more)
  5. You have ever tested your own urine
  6. Discussions at work have ever gotten around to urine colors
  7. The phrase, “That was really bad streaking,” has ever been uttered by you, and you are not an exhibitionist.
  8. You have ever seriously considered making a karyotype out of gummy worms
  9. You can get a needle into the thread
  10. You can’t watch CSI without cursing at least one scientific inaccuracy
  11. You’ve wondered why you can’t drink distilled water in the lab- It should be clean, right?
  12. You have to check the web to find out what the weather is outside
  13. You're slightly too fond of the smell of Xylene/Agar/Ethanol/Alcoholic handwash
  14. You’ve bent down to pick something up off the floor only to scatter the contents of your top pocket.
  15. It doesn't seem strange to you to compare the pleural fluid appearance to different beverages
  16. you've accidentally ruined someone's meal because you forgot that that's not something you talk about at dinner tables with normal people
  17. with 16 in mind, you have ever been at a lunch at work where people pass around pictures of wounds or parasites wiggling around
  18. The nurses complain that nurses are misrepresented in medical dramas and you say, “Hah, at least you exist in medical dramas. How many times do you see doctors in medical dramas doing our job—things that they wouldn't have a clue how to do?”
  19. You've ever compulsively smiled back at a Giardia lamblia under a microscope
  20. You'll touch absolutely anything...so long as you have gloves on.
  21. Tourniquet launching is the phlebotomist's major form of attack, so when you hear that sound, duck.
  22. BUN doesn't have anything to do with a hotdog
  23. You know exactly where to get Cesium if you ever wanted to build a bomb. They use it in processing blood for transfusion. Too bad Department of Homeland Security now regulates the American Red Cross.
  24. After some days, you feel like a shower wouldn't be enough.  You need an autoclave.
  25. You have ever evaluated the veins of someone who you are meeting in the "real world" 
And a lot of these apply to me.

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