Taking medical microbiology through my Pre-Health Professions Certification Program has been an extremely interesting experience. It's so cool to be able to pull out my tube of Neosporin and know how the mechanism of its active ingredients work! I can examine my mom's prescription of amoxicillin (she is recovering from bronchitis) and imagine the microscopic peptidoglycan destruction. I can check the drugs in the IV poles in the ED and tsk-tsk in my head when I see that vancomycin, the so-called "drug of last resort" is being funneled almost nonchalantly into any and every patient's veins, thereby increasing risk of antibiotic-resistance....anyways.
The drawback is that this knowledge has made me much more germaphobic, if that's even possible. There are people who when, in a public restroom, dispense paper towels prior to washing their hands so as to not touch the dispenser handle, and then use their wrists or elbows to turn off the water. And then there's me. Not only do I do that funny public restroom dance, in college, I carried around a travel-sized canister of Lysol and disinfected my pens after using them. I also routinely wiped down all contact surfaces in my apartment like door handles, light switches, computer keyboards, microwave buttons, and oven knobs. I'd sooner lean against a handrail on the bus than touch it with my hands, and I never, ever get under my clean bedsheets wearing my street clothes. That's just gross...Sorry if you do that (also sorry to your future spouse).
Okay so I'm kind of a freak. Sigh. And I know it's not always possible to maintain proper personal hygiene in all scenarios in life. Just saying, it's an important life lesson that is worth learning. Especially in the healthcare field.
Although I take so many precautions in everyday life, learning about mechanisms of infection has seeded in me fears of rarer diseases like tetanus, necrotizing fasciitis (the "flesh-eating disease"), gas gangrene, and botulism. What if I'm unknowingly eating an improperly canned food, and the heat-labile botulism A-B neurotoxin causes in me respiratory failure? What if I get a deep cut when I'm cutting vegetables for dinner, and then C. perfringens invades my tissues, and then I'll have to get a limb amputated? These errant thoughts are kind of ridiculous, but I live under the mantra that anything can happen at any moment.
Okay, back to studying. My final is on Wednesday. It's nowhere near as intense as a Berkeley exam, but I need to study nonetheless.
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