Some Minor Relief

Something I forgot to mention in the last post. Before she went to bed (a good couple hours before I posted “The Waiting Game”), Kay asked me a question: “What if they can’t kill it?” Not quite understanding, I asked for clarification. She then gave me to realize that her conception of the bacteria-identification process was this: the doctors take the culture and then try to kill it with various antibiotics. When they succeed, they know what bacteria they are fighting, and they know how to kill it. Kay’s culture was taken on Sunday evening, and still has not been identified. The longer the wait, the more worried she was getting: they still haven’t been able to kill it!

I responded to this novel concept by reassuring her: no, they identify the bacteria by letting it grow until it identifies itself. But there was a small stab of horror within me as I said this, because I frankly didn’t really know how they do it. I know there’s a disk of sheep’s blood and that the stuff grows on the blood, and that’s about all I knew. I wondered, could Kay be right that this is how they do it? After all, shouldn’t a microscope do the trick? – what needs all these days of growing? Finally, when the nurses came in to hook Kay’s PICC line up to the antibiotic bag, I decided we had to ask. Turns out, I was right. The stress melted out of Kay when we heard this, and I pray that she will sleep better tonight as a result.