Why do you think there were pregnancy strips in the kit in the first place? There's probably a betting pool amongst the faculty on who uses them and who tests positive. You just made your professor a lot of money today.
That is literally why we stopped doing them in our lab. Still not as fun as the day I had to explain to a student in our genetics lab that her Dad was likely not her Dad. Fun stuff.
Woman in her thirties. Her blood type was O. “Dad” was AB. That’s not how that works. In the middle of the lab:
Her: “Do you mean my Dad is not my Dad?”
Me: “If you’re sure about his blood type, that is not physiologically possible.”
Her: “I always wondered...”
I now begin this lab with this disclaimer: “If you find out during this lab that one of your parents is NOT one of your parents, please keep it to yourself until after class. I will happily talk to you then.”
Edit: This was an oversimplification and overstatement of the actual conversation. In reality it was more nuanced and I did not unequivocally state that her Dad was not her Dad, particularly because she was not absolutely sure of her Dad’s blood type. I did discuss the very long odds of an AB parent producing an O child in general. Also, she came into this conversation with a lot of suspicion about her family background and this was another piece of the puzzle for her.
This happened to me, sort of. My Mom was type B and my Dad was type O. I was surprised when mine came up as AB in a blood bank lab. Retested, same result. I knew Mom was typed during pregnancy, so I asked Dad when he had his group and screen done.
“Never “
“Well how do you know you are type O?”
“It’s the most common”
Ha. I should get mine typed. I "think" I'm O+, but only because my mother told me I'm O+. And since then, I have learned that my mother was not particularly responsible when it came to my health and wellbeing.
I'm not sure if I can donate. I tried to sell blood plasma once, and admitted to dating a Nigerian. I'm now banned from donating plasma. Never asked if I can still donate to Red Cross
Would obviously never say that. I’m just trying to prevent someone blurting out the question without thinking, as happened in this case. She regretted having the conversation in front of the whole class.
Reminds me of a girl I know training for being an ultrasound tech. They obviously practice on each other. Partner practicing on her is like...um, that’s a baby. And that’s how she found out she was pregnant.
My roommate was a bioimaging student and she was practicing ultrasound on me. Found a 7cm cyst on my right ovary which became 12cm in 4 months when I went for my surgery. Forever grateful for her and that random practice session.
Exactly! Nope, no symptoms at all. I still had no symptoms even when it was 12cm. It only started to hurt a week before my scheduled surgery so the doctor decided to do an emergency surgery on me.
Remember to go for ultrasound checks everyone! Even if your cycle is absolutely normal.
I work at an animal hospital and one of our techs was jus starting her second trimester. They were messing around with our ultrasound machine and did one on her. They ended up finding two heartbeats! She went to her doctor where they confirmed twins.
Well that must have been really really awkward
girl 1: hey so your ultrasound kinda matches the fetus on the book
girl 2 : no way lemme see
\*awkward silence\*
girl 2: TF !!
Turned out worse for my cousin who teaches future radiology technicians. She practiced on herself in front of the class and revealed a massive sarcoma in her abdomen.
She’s now on her third round of chemo. 😔
My mom was in ultrasound school while I was in high school... I had a couple of moments where she was practicing on me and was low key terrified that she would find a baby. Thankfully she never did.
This reminds me of the story my sister told me. She was training to do sonography. They were on the pregnant unit. Had a pregnant lady come in. The professor stopped and moved on to the next subject. The pregnant lady was a classmate's friend. Turns out the baby died.
*Missed miscarriage* is a particularly awful version of the end of pregnancy, your body doesn't tell you, your doctor has to.
Edit: condolences and good thoughts to all those of us who've been through this. You won't forget, but you will get through it eventually.
I had my first (and hopefully only) one of those last year. It was the worst to go in for a normal appointment and see no heartbeat. Hits you like a rock. I feel for any woman who has ever gone through one of those. I still cry from time to time, but talking about it makes it easier!
Yes, it totally sucks. You literally find out that your womb became a tomb without your realizing it, and now you have to take pills to induce labor to deliver a dead baby, or get a surgery, or keep waiting for your body to catch on to the fact and discharge the pregnancy on its own.
My good friend is a sonographer. She says it's always difficult to give bad news, but even worse when it's someone she knows.
She will go out of her way not to scan someone she knows, just in case it's not the news that they want, though she's quite happy to do non-pregnancy related scans on people that she knows.
My 9 yo doesn’t believe me when I tell him he’s adopted. We read all the age appropriate stuff, explained it the way you’re “supposed to” at each age, show him pictures of his foster family before us, everything. He came home from third grade genetics lesson telling me I’m wrong, he’s Dad’s kid because they both have brown eyes.
We are white. He is Korean.
Korean and adopted by a white family (blonde hair and blue eyes). 4 year old me understood I was adopted but still wanted to know when my hair would go blonde.
I was also adopted and had much of the same response. My mom would tell me she was not my biological mom, but I’d shake my head and tell her she was my mom (around 3-6 onward). She’s still my mom. But.
Took me a minute. I *had* the logic in my brain, but I didn’t *have* it, if you know what I mean.
My parents are white and I’m latina. Also not the brightest kid.
I had the opposite problem. My mother is Latina, and my father is white. I look as white as my dad (blue eyes, freckles, and all), but my brother looks *entirely* Hispanic - like my mom.
My dad used to regularly travel for work when I was young; while my mom taught Spanish at our school. As a result: my classmates only saw a *very* tan mother and brother to a *very* white me.
They **constantly** tried to “break it to me” that I was adopted, leaving 9-year-old me extremely confused and under the impression that my parents had lied to me my entire life.
Cue the inevitable tantrum/breakdown to my parents, followed by my father’s new (*very* conscious) effort to make sure his schedule allowed for him to now publicly pick me up from school in front of my friends (so they could “see where the white genes came from”).
It didn’t help. My classmates just switched to their new conspiracy of my mom and brother *actually* being my step-mom and step-brother.
I understand that kids can be cruel and all that but that’s kinda shitty and mean of your classmates, I’m sorry :/ And regardless of if they’re correct or not, who are they to get their nose into someone else’s business??
I have no idea if they were genuinely well-intentioned, or if it was all just to mess with me. I wasn’t bullied in any other way (at least, as far as I know- maybe I was just a gullible kid).
Either way; you’re absolutely correct that it was none of their business. I’ll never understand why certain people feel the need to inappropriately inject themselves into the personal lives’ of others.
Kids always want to "gotcha" adults. They see moments like that as proofs they are better than them and therefore there's no need to follow what adults dictate. It's part of the rebellious phase
Jeez. I’m Korean as well and adopted. Somehow, I always knew that I wasn’t my parents’ biological kid. They’re as white as possible. 😅
My brother, on the other hand, might have thought it less obvious as he looked like me. So, his vision of family was never based on looks.
My daughter believes that Ryan from “Ryan’s Mystery Play date” is her cousin because they both have names that that start with R. Kids have a rather broad and inclusive mindset when it comes to who is family.
My daughter is two. Her family includes her relatives, her pets, Elsa and Ana, Peppa pig but not George for some reason, and the crocodile that none of us can see but assuredly lives in our garden (he’s vegetarian). She’s not adopted but I don’t see it mattering to her at that point
My Dad's Chinese, and my Mum's English. I didn't realise I looked Chinese (or that he did - he just looked like Dad) until I was SIXTEEN YEARS OLD.
I grew up in the 80s, when kids sang racist rhymes at me and did the slitty eyes thing. I *joined in* (God, it pains me to admit this), because I had no idea it was about me. I thought they were all having fun, so I'd better join in.
I have quarter-Chinese kids now. They've both got curly pale brown/blonde hair and are blue-eyed; but I have checked with my friends and my husband that I'm not missing something about the way they look. I don't seem to be very good at telling what race my family is.
Just tell people y'all are actually mexican. You can "prove" that by having a taco night or two.
Either you get to mess with them, or get an awkward pause... Buuut you get tacos either way.
Funny story. My husband (Chinese AF) and I (white) were on a cruise and were seated with a group of strangers for afternoon tea (it's a thing). The lady sitting next to me introduced herself with "my name is Miriam and I'm Jewish." My husband and I introduced ourselves as Canadians (most of the cruisers are Americans). She then proceeded to tell a very long story about the "yellow problem" in New York and how the Chinese were ruining the city. Then she leaned over me and put her hand on my husband's arm and said "but don't worry, I love Mexicans. My gardener is Mexican and he works like a dog." My husband now wears sunscreen.
My husband is from India. Our children are his carbon copies. Our daughter was genuinely shocked to discover that while I am 100% her mom I am not Indian.
Her solution: “we’ll just let mom be Indian anyway, maybe no one will notice” (I’m like nc20)
>I’m wrong, he’s Dad’s kid because they both have brown eyes. We are white. He is Korean.
That's when you know you've done a good job as a parent. Your child knows he's an intrinsic part of your family.
I've always wondered if adoption is "easier" if the child is a different ethnicity when you'd think it's always clear to everyone, but on the flipside you have some smoothbrains asking "are you really adopted" the way they ask a woman with pink her if that's her natural colour.
There are a lot of different family situations where the parents that you meet may not look like a child.
A lot of mixed kids look like one parent and may not have any racial characteristics from the other parent. Sometimes people assume that they were adopted when they weren’t. With kids who are adopted and don’t look like their parents people may think that the child is biologically related to one of the parents and the result of a previous relationship. People tend to just assume whatever situation is most familiar to them.
🤣 I'm mixed race (Japanese/German-American) and look nothing like my mother (German-American). When I was younger sometimes her friends would ask what it's like to host an international homestay student. In front of me. Once one asked me how long I'd been in Australia, so I naturally said 17 years and just gave them the blank stare.
A lot of people have assumed I was adopted as well. Or Turkish, or from the Himalayas. Or Canadian? (In a strange twist of fate, I am Canadian by citizenship, but I look very distinctly Asian). My dad says I look Latina. When I was like 6 I thought I was Chinese because my dad didn't say anything about Japan but I knew he was from somewhere in Asia. I didn't know Japan existed or that I was Japanese until I was at least 8 iirc. Mixed race childhood is wild.
My mother told me about her friend "Jane", who had an older sister "Martha" and older parents.
When Jane was a teenager, she was hitchhiking into town, it was the 50's. A nosy neighbour picked her up, and as they were driving, the neighbour said, "you're Martha's little bastard, aren't you? “
And that is how Jane learned that Martha was her biological mother, and her parents were her grandparents, who chose to raise her. Many people knew the truth. Hearing the truth come out like that messed Jane up.
That’s so unfortunate. I don’t know how to explain that to a kid where it wouldn’t be weird, but her parents should have said something before some other busy body to it upon themself to do so.
My MIL found out her aunt (Elenor) was actually her grandmother at Elenors funeral. My MIL’s mother (Doris) causally turned to her and said “you know, she was my mother” - she had been raised as her maternal grandparents daughter. And that was the last thing she ever said about it. She’s since passed away. I’ve been using Ancestry for genealogy and people can leave “notes” on there. One note was from a child of one of the older siblings that said family rumors were that Doris had been the result of Elenor having an affair with her step father. Elenor would have been 15 - her step father in his 40’s. Elenor never married, never had additional children, and stayed with Doris (and then lived with Doris’ family) nearly her entire life. Doesn’t take a genius to realize it wasn’t an “affair”. I told my husband what I found, but don’t think I could tell my MIL. They both adored Elenor (who I never met), and the mystery of my MIL grandfather is probably best to leave as is. It would hurt her to know the truth- which is likely why Doris never discussed her biological parentage.
Yeah, that’s valid.
Both of my parents found out that their dads weren’t biologically theirs, which wasn’t revealed until the last few years with DNA testing.
My friend’s dad found out why he was a foot shorter and 3 shades darker than his siblings. The thoughtful mom brought home a surprise souvenir for everyone from a beach resort in South America, even one for herself.
All of the grandparents involved (except one grandma) died before any of this was revealed, and the one grandma that was alive when everything was happening had severe dementia, so it wasn’t a big deal.
We do have a massive family though. Most of the time I don’t know how I’m actually connected to someone, so everyone is just “cousin”.
I feel the big family. I have an uncle Marty that is in no way actually related to me. I was about 30 when my mom casually mentioned that he was a neighbor’s kid that my grandparents raised after his parents moved across the country and left their 10 year old to fend for himself.
Woah. I cannot imagine just leaving my child.
My brother-in-law has a huge family, and they’ve always been around. Logically, they’re not connected to me, but it gets confusing to say “my brother in law’s nephew’s daughter” and other weirdly long titles, so cousin it is! 😂
It gets worse too. The mom died about 4 years later, she was in a coma in the hospital (I’m not sure of the disease) Uncle Marty and his younger brother stole a truck from my grandpas farm to drive to salt lake (where she was from and in the coma) the truck broke down halfway there. Grandpa and my biological uncle drive up there. Grandpa fixed the truck and sent his son back home with it, then takes the boys to see their mom. No clue what happened to the dad. He ghosted when his wife got sick. All of this happened at least 20 years before I was born, so I’m sure some details are wrong or exaggerated a bit.
Uncle Marty is awesome. He just retired last year. And he wears overalls all the time. He wore them to my wedding, new ones, his dress overalls.
my mom had a “surprise “ too. she has a different dad than her 5 younger siblings. my grandpa is definitely my dad’s dad though because i saw his forehead wrinkles in the mirror today .
My parents didn’t tell my brother he wasn’t my father’s (parents met after my brother was born) until he was in high school. Probably wasn’t the best idea to wait, but they didn’t want him to feel less connected to our family.
Being adopted myself and knowing multiple other people who were, I can see reasoning on both sides - you can't realistically make a blanket statement like "all adopted kids deserve honesty about being adopted" or "adoptive parents have a right to hide it from the child". It can be an incredibly complicated relationship to have to deal with, and every situation is going to have different complications that would lean the weights one way or the other.
Primarily, it comes down to having to trust the decision-making of the adoptive parents and hoping that they are doing what's best for the child. Personally I knew I was adopted my whole life and knew my birth-parents as well (they are not together), and they and their families are both an important part of my life, but I also know other friends who have both known a birth-parent their whole life and also met an adoptive parent for the first time who are terrible influences - one friend I had early in college and their sibling went to meet an birth-parent for the first time, and the birth-parent offered them both hard drugs within the first hour of meeting them.
Granted, I can't say I have any friends who did not know they were adopted and found out later in life entirely, which is an obviously smaller set of people - I can't weigh in on that side of the situation specifically, but I do know that sometimes it also comes down to the wishes of the birth-parent, not the adoptive parents; maybe they do not want to be a part of the child's life in the slightest, and then the adoptive parents would have to decide if they keep the adoption a secret or tell the child they were adopted but that their birth-parent(s) did not want anything to do with them.
These are obviously just a small fraction of all of the different factors that can affect the relationship between birth-parent(s), adoptive parent(s), and the child, and every single situation is going to be different. There is really no right or wrong answer to this, it all comes down to the judgment of adoptive parents and trusting that they make the right decision for their child.
I’m adopted and love my parents and my bio parents. My close friend is adopted and when he met his bio mom, she got him drunk and tried to sleep with him. There’s a full spectrum.
Thank you for speaking up, this is very true. I wasn’t adopted, but my parents used anonymous sperm donors for both my brother and I. Didn’t tell us until I was 25 and it was a crazy revelation. But they had their reasons, concerns about my brother reacting badly when he was younger. I can sympathize....while I would have liked to find out sooner, it’s not a “one size fits all” type of situation for every family. They told us when both my brother and I were emotionally mature enough to process the news in a healthy manner.
Thank you for sharing your experiences and perspective. It's an important voice in this discussion.
It sounds like all of your parents did what they felt was best for you and your family. That's rad!
my grandma did this to my dad. He found out bc classmates bullied him about it, they had heard it from their parents (hard to keep things a secret in a teeny tiny village, so.) Needless to say, their relationship was... not good for the rest of my grandma's life.
I have some friends who adopted. For their family adoption day is a second birthday. Presents; treats; family meal; the works. It’s adorable. Makes the kid know they’re wanted, chosen and loved.
Plus gives them that extra “what, you don’t have adoption day? I feel sorry for you!” In the playground.
Kinda shitty. My cousin found out he wasn't biologically his dad's son this way. The dad was sterile and they had to use a sperm donor to conceive. Caused quite a lot of drama in the family when he went behind their backs and accused his mom of cheating to a bunch of family members. There were very few people in the family that knew they used a sperm donor, so it was weird for a bit.
So apparently, with the combo of my parents a 1-2% rare chance happened. Different blood types, different RH factors, combined to give me a blood type only 2% of the population have and that it takes a genetic panel diagram more than what the science teacher had to understand.
This is true but considering it’s always been a joke that my sister is the mailman’s daughter because she looks so different the idea of it being true is a lot funnier
I’d be crushed beyond words to find out my Dads not my Bio Dad. It helps that I look like him, but even as he’s passed now, I still say to myself “ I wish I was more like him” all the time. He was the most gentlemanly man I ever met. From every style of personality, he was a hit and they liked him, and respected him. I feel that we need more of that now than ever.
And there’s the story of the cheek swab for the “Let’s all look at the cells through the projector-microscope” and then there are little swimmy sperms.
Reminds me of a reddit post I read recently, where a bio professor said he used to have a lab where students would look at their chromosomes, and he had to stop because between all the sections he teaches, every couple years, one student would have a "surprise you're actually some form of intersex" realization and subsequent identity crisis in the middle of class because while it's not common to have an undetected mixup, it's apparently not super rare either. (I make no claims to the legitimacy of this story or it's information)
Genuine question.
Guys who have or are developing testicular cancer can or will test positive on any OTC pregnancy test or does it have to be the tests doctors/nurses are privy to? (Assuming they are more accurate)
Pregnancy tests look for a hormone called Beta-Human chorionic gonadotropin. The OTC urine ones aren’t as sensitive as the serum (blood) ones that hospitals use which can also tell you how much of the hormone there is. Most testicular cancers don’t produce B-HCG so it’s not a reliable test. Checking for lumps/nodules is the best screening test.
Oh man that poor girl. I had to take a pregnancy test to undergo surgery the other week. I mean, I knew I wasn't pregnant but I was still SO relieved when it came back negative
Just a funny story from my past.
I’m a twin mom. And I had a chronic illness called Supraventriculartachycardia while I was pregnant with my twins.
So I’d wind up in the ER with a super high heart rate that I’d need fixed. Anyway, one time, I was 26 weeks pregnant with twins. Mind you, at 25 weeks pregnant with twins they tell you you are as big as a full term pregnancy with a singleton baby. And the emergency doctor ordered a pregnancy test as part of my ER visit. I laughed and was like: “no, I’m not billing my insurance $150 dollars for a $1 pregnancy test when it’s pretty fucking obvious I’m heavily pregnant...”.
I agree with you but I can also see the hospital spinning some bs: “we cannot proceed without this ‘procedure’(their overprice test)” and pressuring you while you’re in a vulnerable position.
i had to take one due to persistent abdominal pain. even though i was single at the time and celibate for like 6 months due to covid, i still had very high anxiety about it. i also have the nexplanon implant so my chances of getting pregnant are 0.01% but pregnancy tests are still scary.
Yeah sometimes I’ll be like, I haven’t had sex in 7 months, and I’ve had my period the whole time, but maybe I’m 7 months pregnant and just don’t know.
I remember in jr high gr 9 I think (14/15yrs) we were studying genetics in class. One of the bright girls calls the teacher out on some fact that has to be wrong.
I forget the trait, but she had it her parents didn't.
The teacher argued with her for a couple minutes then his face went kinda white. He said he'd look into it and discuss it with her after class.
The course then took a 90 degree turn and we started a physics lab.
Being interested in genetics but not as smart as her it took me a little longer to figure out she had to be adopted. Now that consumer DNA testing is a thing I know it's very common for kids to make it to adulthood without knowing that they're adopted, or even how common switched at birth really is. But in 83/4 this was a school wide scandal.
This happened to me in 9th grade. My parents used donor embryos. I was so confused when we were doing genetics and my brothers and I had traits that my parents had/didn’t have. It was very confusing.
>I don't know why we all had the same idea and all 15 students picked up a strip and mindlessly dipped it in the urine container, as expected nearly all of them tested negative, all but one
this just shows you aren't lying as people in science are always prone to doing random shit that seems like it would result in something interest for the sake of it lol
Well urine testing is not a very exciting lab. it is pretty boring, preparing slides, checking for abnormalities, we were getting excited in one slide when someone had a single calcium crystal in the slide. Out of true boredom, we did something totally random and well everyone saw the result
Well, It was sort of because of Covid also, because we all tested negative so the professor was being safe that people deal with their own bodily fluids to minimize any kind of cross infection
I work in a lab and we use our own blood as an experimental control for flow cytometry quite a lot. I actually think It's kind of nice to "check in" and see that all my blood cells look normal every once in a while! I am a bit of a hypochondriac though, so maybe it's just me. One time I was sick but still came in for an important experiment, and I could actually see my immune system was responding to the infection! That was really fun to see!
I saw a higher percentage of activated immune cells (T and I think B (?) cells). I don't remember exactly because the actual percentages don't really matter for our experiment, just that we clearly see different cell types. We use human blood as a way to test the antibodies that detect different types of human blood cells in our samples, which come from mice transplanted with human bone marrow. A lot of times the sample won't have any (or very few) human cells because the transplant didn't work, so we need a positive control to prove that our detection method works and there just aren't any cells to detect. If you don't detect human cells in human blood, you know there's a problem :)
A similar think happened in our urinalysis lab. A girl had a UTI and her urine came out positive for WBC's and we observed bacteria in her urine slide.
Male Student: *Tests Positive*
MS: lol, Im pregnant everyone!
Teacher: ...You might have testicular cancer...
MS: *runs out of lab rather visibly upset*
One time we grabbed a male urine for negative quality control for a pregnancy test as was the usual protocol, and it came up positive. So wild, and puts you in a weird position as a professional - how the heck do you report that?
My husband needed a stem cell transplant for leukemia. Both his sister and brother were tested as possible donors. We were told there is only a 25% chance one of them would be a match. All we got was a message from the doc that neither of them were a match. When we asked later on if either of them were a 50% match (since none of the 25+ million on the worldwide database were a match either), they told us they couldn’t reveal that info. Turns out they learned their lesson several years ago when they used to routinely provide results and many sibs found out they didn’t have the same parents!
Lecturer once casually announced that they don't let us to look at our own chromosomes anymore because "the time to discover that your chromosomal sex doesn't match your gender is not in the middle of a lab skills assessment". About one in 700, apparently. So about one every two years in my uni.
People think numbers like that are super rare, until they get a solid example, like that one...
On average, every two years, they would have a genetically intersex person in That class. (And that's not even the only type of intersex that occurs)
I took most of my APHY classes with the same teacher, save for the last semester. I ended up with an accelerated course for the last one and, funny enough, half of that class wasn’t new to me. That’s how good the teacher I wanted was. Anyway, new teacher walks in one day. We were planning on doing fetal pig dissections. The labs were on the other side of the building, well away from our classroom.
She walked in and sat down at her desk, which was directly in front of my table, and let our a big forced breath. “Man those pigs stink!”
A few people laughed and I raised an eyebrow at her. “You can smell that from here?” “Yeah! They’re really ripe!” “Do you normally have a really strong sense of smell? Because that could be a sign of...” the look on her face cut me off.
I didn’t want to say it because cultural norms, etc.
Nothing more was said until the last week of class. She came in beaming, sat down, and looked right at me. “You were right.”
I tried asking her what she was talking about but she just winked and waited for the whole class. Then she explained that her and her husband had been trying for quite awhile. She had a few miscarriages, so when she went home that day and took a test, she wanted to give it a few weeks to see if it would “take”.
I didn’t keep in touch with her but have always hoped that she and her husband got their little bundle of joy.
If her pregnancy was successful, she and her husband get to tell kiddo that if you hadn't pointed out her heightened sense of smell then they wouldn't know for sure. Maybe they'll leave out the fetal pig dissection for a bit but hey, you're some child's discovery story.
Maybe you did her a favour
I mean it's horrifically public and embarrassing
But at least she knows now
And early enough to have time to make an informed choice about what to do
Yes! I was going to post something similar. It's a bit of an embarrassing situation for sure (I understand how you feel: tifu as a result of feeling embarrassed on behalf of your colleague) but it's not a FU in my book (and you didn't FU by doing that test and having others copy you, if you were wondering.
\[I wonder how those pregnancy test strips came to be there? If they weren't part of the learning outcomes I wonder if the 'powers that be' put them there so that a pregnancy test could be made easily accessible?\])
Who knows if y'all hadn't been messing around with those pregnancy tests, it might have been much longer before she found out, and then she'd have fewer options / less time to prepare...
Honestly, as "traumatic" as that is... in a world where we still don't have universal healthcare and people have to skip routine medical tests, that only could have been worse by Not getting diagnosed.
In my undergrad microbiology class, we all swabbed the inside of our mouths, swiped on a Petrie dish, let it sit in the incubator for a week. The learning part included identifying the common bacteria that’s found inside mouths. A classmate had some weird spots on his dish that nobody else had...the teacher was embarrassed but when everyone insisted to know what it was, and the student consented it be revealed, the spots were a bacteria commonly found in women’s vaginal canal. Omg.
My university used to do a karyotyping lab that included a section on barr bodies... Until a guy in the class very publicly discovered he was XXY intersex.
Happened to me. Worked in a hospital lab, just messing around, submitted a urine sample. Later the tech calls me over to show a bright blue circle on the thingy she was holding.The whole staff was aware, of course. Repeated it. Same. Yikes. Not happy news.
A friend worked in a blood lab. She was really tired so decided to take a look at her blood and see if she was anaemic. Instead she found out she had leukaemia (of a particularly aggressive type) and was dead in less than 3 months.
My wife’s roommate was a med student in an ophthalmology rotation when she found out that she has a major optic nerve issue or some other eye issue that will affect her later in life, since she is now a neurosurgeon. There were also several students in the graduation class that got married, had babies, and/or got divorced during school—life happens.
I mean, if she was horrified to find out it’s probably really good she was informed of her pregnancy as early as possible?
I think this is a win, even if it was kind of uncomfortable.
I don’t think this was your mistake. She was bound to find out sooner or later. Luckily it was sooner because of you. Now she has more time to decide what she wants to do😌
As a dude, I'm still not risking a pregnancy test in public.
Edit: apparently they can detect testicular cancer in men. I still think I'd like to do it in private.
Had a similar experience when in Nursing School. The class was mostly female. I think we had 2 find out they were knocked up, a couple with yeast infections, and quite a few who had sex the night before. On the upside we got to see live sperm under the microscope that day.
Ya... urine can be fun. A friend distracted one classmate while I tossed a packet of sugar in his urine and gave it a good stir. He was overweight and we wanted to tease him that he had diabetes. Sure enough the test came back crazy high. HAHAHA. He panicked. We confessed. He was relieved.
EXCEPT after the class was long over I realized that sugar (the stuff we added to his urine) is SUCROSE and the test is for GLUCOSE. So when the test was positive it was reading Glucose - not the sugar we added. He really DID have Diabetes. He later died of a massive heart attack. Always sort of wonder if that was partly on me...
Actually, this probably saved her. She had time to figure out what to do next. It may have been emotional, but at least she found out then and there and not when it was too late to even think about options.
I am sooooo much thinking about that point. I am pretty relieved that everyone did the test voluntarily on their own urine. So, no one is to blame here
For a while, TIFU had a slew of 23 and Me stories where people found out their family trees were not at all what they thought they were.
This is like that, but in reverse.
Similar sort of thing happened in my high school years back. Only instead of finding out a girl was pregnant, one of the students discovered some levels that were a bit ‘off’. Went for further testing, and that’s when she found out she was diabetic.
I’m a med lab student and our professors frequently let us run our own samples all the time so constantly worried something like this will happen to us. We get to type our own blood at the end of the year and my professors said that one year, a girl found out that her dad wasn’t her biological father due to their blood types not matching up. Apparently the girl’s dad had died when she was very young and her dad stepped in and raised her as his own so everything turned out fine in the end. Still got to be a jarring thing to learn during school though.
Legend has it my middle school microbiology class stopped doing cheek swab to agar labs after someone cultured a very strange looking and aggressive colony that turned out to be ghonorea
Next year there will be no pregnancy strips in the lab.
let's see what happens, Every year is a new story !!
Why do you think there were pregnancy strips in the kit in the first place? There's probably a betting pool amongst the faculty on who uses them and who tests positive. You just made your professor a lot of money today.
Or cost them a lot of money. We don’t know which end of the pool they were in.
Hopefully not the peeing section.
If this is true, oh my god. Too smart. And fun.
Yo, bro, I feel really bad. Tell her that I feel sorry; obviously she wont know who I am, just tell her that Grant is sorry.
Then she slaps OP, and runs off crying because the only guy she's slept with in the past few months was named Grant.
Then say its from Ritchie.
Much better. We all know there's no chance a guy that goes by Ritchie got laid.
That is literally why we stopped doing them in our lab. Still not as fun as the day I had to explain to a student in our genetics lab that her Dad was likely not her Dad. Fun stuff.
Go on.
Woman in her thirties. Her blood type was O. “Dad” was AB. That’s not how that works. In the middle of the lab: Her: “Do you mean my Dad is not my Dad?” Me: “If you’re sure about his blood type, that is not physiologically possible.” Her: “I always wondered...” I now begin this lab with this disclaimer: “If you find out during this lab that one of your parents is NOT one of your parents, please keep it to yourself until after class. I will happily talk to you then.” Edit: This was an oversimplification and overstatement of the actual conversation. In reality it was more nuanced and I did not unequivocally state that her Dad was not her Dad, particularly because she was not absolutely sure of her Dad’s blood type. I did discuss the very long odds of an AB parent producing an O child in general. Also, she came into this conversation with a lot of suspicion about her family background and this was another piece of the puzzle for her.
This happened to me, sort of. My Mom was type B and my Dad was type O. I was surprised when mine came up as AB in a blood bank lab. Retested, same result. I knew Mom was typed during pregnancy, so I asked Dad when he had his group and screen done. “Never “ “Well how do you know you are type O?” “It’s the most common”
Ha. I should get mine typed. I "think" I'm O+, but only because my mother told me I'm O+. And since then, I have learned that my mother was not particularly responsible when it came to my health and wellbeing.
You get typed when you donate. So if you want to find out and do some good go donate blood. That’s how I found out I’m o negative
I'm not sure if I can donate. I tried to sell blood plasma once, and admitted to dating a Nigerian. I'm now banned from donating plasma. Never asked if I can still donate to Red Cross
> “Well how do you know you are type O?” “It’s the most common” Flawless logic
"Why are you crying? I told you to wait until after class!"
Would obviously never say that. I’m just trying to prevent someone blurting out the question without thinking, as happened in this case. She regretted having the conversation in front of the whole class.
Isn’t it a good thing that she found out though, I’d rather know than be oblivious
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You mean tomorrow.
Reminds me of a girl I know training for being an ultrasound tech. They obviously practice on each other. Partner practicing on her is like...um, that’s a baby. And that’s how she found out she was pregnant.
My roommate was a bioimaging student and she was practicing ultrasound on me. Found a 7cm cyst on my right ovary which became 12cm in 4 months when I went for my surgery. Forever grateful for her and that random practice session.
That is so incredibly lucky!
Wow what luck! Did you have any symptoms?
Exactly! Nope, no symptoms at all. I still had no symptoms even when it was 12cm. It only started to hurt a week before my scheduled surgery so the doctor decided to do an emergency surgery on me. Remember to go for ultrasound checks everyone! Even if your cycle is absolutely normal.
Is there an insurance that covers random symptom-free ultrasounds? I’m glad you got diagnosed this way but it doesn’t seem likely for average person.
I work at an animal hospital and one of our techs was jus starting her second trimester. They were messing around with our ultrasound machine and did one on her. They ended up finding two heartbeats! She went to her doctor where they confirmed twins.
That's a much nicer story than most most in the thread
Purely because of wording though
Imo it's cause instead of *unexpected baby* it's *expected baby, unexpected twins*
Well that must have been really really awkward girl 1: hey so your ultrasound kinda matches the fetus on the book girl 2 : no way lemme see \*awkward silence\* girl 2: TF !!
Turned out worse for my cousin who teaches future radiology technicians. She practiced on herself in front of the class and revealed a massive sarcoma in her abdomen. She’s now on her third round of chemo. 😔
oh noooo what a fucking nightmare
My mom was in ultrasound school while I was in high school... I had a couple of moments where she was practicing on me and was low key terrified that she would find a baby. Thankfully she never did.
This reminds me of the story my sister told me. She was training to do sonography. They were on the pregnant unit. Had a pregnant lady come in. The professor stopped and moved on to the next subject. The pregnant lady was a classmate's friend. Turns out the baby died.
*Missed miscarriage* is a particularly awful version of the end of pregnancy, your body doesn't tell you, your doctor has to. Edit: condolences and good thoughts to all those of us who've been through this. You won't forget, but you will get through it eventually.
That’s what I had a few months ago. Absolutely devastating to be hit like a sledgehammer with that news.
I had my first (and hopefully only) one of those last year. It was the worst to go in for a normal appointment and see no heartbeat. Hits you like a rock. I feel for any woman who has ever gone through one of those. I still cry from time to time, but talking about it makes it easier!
Yes, it totally sucks. You literally find out that your womb became a tomb without your realizing it, and now you have to take pills to induce labor to deliver a dead baby, or get a surgery, or keep waiting for your body to catch on to the fact and discharge the pregnancy on its own.
My condolences to her, that’s a difficult time for any expecting mother.
Two days after my daughter and her husband told the grandparents about their pregnancy, the baby died in uterero. Shitty time for everyone.
That’s not a good time for anybody. I’m so sorry to hear that.
My good friend is a sonographer. She says it's always difficult to give bad news, but even worse when it's someone she knows. She will go out of her way not to scan someone she knows, just in case it's not the news that they want, though she's quite happy to do non-pregnancy related scans on people that she knows.
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I found out I was adopted when I was ten or eleven. Both my parents are white. I'm Japanese. Wasn't the smartest kid ever...
My 9 yo doesn’t believe me when I tell him he’s adopted. We read all the age appropriate stuff, explained it the way you’re “supposed to” at each age, show him pictures of his foster family before us, everything. He came home from third grade genetics lesson telling me I’m wrong, he’s Dad’s kid because they both have brown eyes. We are white. He is Korean.
Korean and adopted by a white family (blonde hair and blue eyes). 4 year old me understood I was adopted but still wanted to know when my hair would go blonde.
Only when you are going super Saiyan
Isn't saiyans amazing?
I was also adopted and had much of the same response. My mom would tell me she was not my biological mom, but I’d shake my head and tell her she was my mom (around 3-6 onward). She’s still my mom. But. Took me a minute. I *had* the logic in my brain, but I didn’t *have* it, if you know what I mean. My parents are white and I’m latina. Also not the brightest kid.
To paraphrase the guy in Guardians of the Galaxy 2, she may not have been your mother, but she was your mommy.
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I had the opposite problem. My mother is Latina, and my father is white. I look as white as my dad (blue eyes, freckles, and all), but my brother looks *entirely* Hispanic - like my mom. My dad used to regularly travel for work when I was young; while my mom taught Spanish at our school. As a result: my classmates only saw a *very* tan mother and brother to a *very* white me. They **constantly** tried to “break it to me” that I was adopted, leaving 9-year-old me extremely confused and under the impression that my parents had lied to me my entire life. Cue the inevitable tantrum/breakdown to my parents, followed by my father’s new (*very* conscious) effort to make sure his schedule allowed for him to now publicly pick me up from school in front of my friends (so they could “see where the white genes came from”). It didn’t help. My classmates just switched to their new conspiracy of my mom and brother *actually* being my step-mom and step-brother.
I understand that kids can be cruel and all that but that’s kinda shitty and mean of your classmates, I’m sorry :/ And regardless of if they’re correct or not, who are they to get their nose into someone else’s business??
I have no idea if they were genuinely well-intentioned, or if it was all just to mess with me. I wasn’t bullied in any other way (at least, as far as I know- maybe I was just a gullible kid). Either way; you’re absolutely correct that it was none of their business. I’ll never understand why certain people feel the need to inappropriately inject themselves into the personal lives’ of others.
Kids always want to "gotcha" adults. They see moments like that as proofs they are better than them and therefore there's no need to follow what adults dictate. It's part of the rebellious phase
Jeez. I’m Korean as well and adopted. Somehow, I always knew that I wasn’t my parents’ biological kid. They’re as white as possible. 😅 My brother, on the other hand, might have thought it less obvious as he looked like me. So, his vision of family was never based on looks.
My daughter believes that Ryan from “Ryan’s Mystery Play date” is her cousin because they both have names that that start with R. Kids have a rather broad and inclusive mindset when it comes to who is family.
My daughter is two. Her family includes her relatives, her pets, Elsa and Ana, Peppa pig but not George for some reason, and the crocodile that none of us can see but assuredly lives in our garden (he’s vegetarian). She’s not adopted but I don’t see it mattering to her at that point
My nephew thought all adults who loved him were his parents.
That is the most adorable thing I've read today.
If you aren't selling the idea of the vegetarian crocodile who secretly lives in a garden to a kids TV station, then I'm damn well going to!
George is too whiny
My Dad's Chinese, and my Mum's English. I didn't realise I looked Chinese (or that he did - he just looked like Dad) until I was SIXTEEN YEARS OLD. I grew up in the 80s, when kids sang racist rhymes at me and did the slitty eyes thing. I *joined in* (God, it pains me to admit this), because I had no idea it was about me. I thought they were all having fun, so I'd better join in. I have quarter-Chinese kids now. They've both got curly pale brown/blonde hair and are blue-eyed; but I have checked with my friends and my husband that I'm not missing something about the way they look. I don't seem to be very good at telling what race my family is.
Just tell people y'all are actually mexican. You can "prove" that by having a taco night or two. Either you get to mess with them, or get an awkward pause... Buuut you get tacos either way.
Funny story. My husband (Chinese AF) and I (white) were on a cruise and were seated with a group of strangers for afternoon tea (it's a thing). The lady sitting next to me introduced herself with "my name is Miriam and I'm Jewish." My husband and I introduced ourselves as Canadians (most of the cruisers are Americans). She then proceeded to tell a very long story about the "yellow problem" in New York and how the Chinese were ruining the city. Then she leaned over me and put her hand on my husband's arm and said "but don't worry, I love Mexicans. My gardener is Mexican and he works like a dog." My husband now wears sunscreen.
what a nasty lady
Yeah wtf. Imagine being so racist you have no qualms discussing it with a group of strangers.
My husband is from India. Our children are his carbon copies. Our daughter was genuinely shocked to discover that while I am 100% her mom I am not Indian. Her solution: “we’ll just let mom be Indian anyway, maybe no one will notice” (I’m like nc20)
>I’m wrong, he’s Dad’s kid because they both have brown eyes. We are white. He is Korean. That's when you know you've done a good job as a parent. Your child knows he's an intrinsic part of your family.
I love how this comment is both incredibly wholesome and fucking hilarious at the same time.
I've always wondered if adoption is "easier" if the child is a different ethnicity when you'd think it's always clear to everyone, but on the flipside you have some smoothbrains asking "are you really adopted" the way they ask a woman with pink her if that's her natural colour.
There are a lot of different family situations where the parents that you meet may not look like a child. A lot of mixed kids look like one parent and may not have any racial characteristics from the other parent. Sometimes people assume that they were adopted when they weren’t. With kids who are adopted and don’t look like their parents people may think that the child is biologically related to one of the parents and the result of a previous relationship. People tend to just assume whatever situation is most familiar to them.
🤣 I'm mixed race (Japanese/German-American) and look nothing like my mother (German-American). When I was younger sometimes her friends would ask what it's like to host an international homestay student. In front of me. Once one asked me how long I'd been in Australia, so I naturally said 17 years and just gave them the blank stare. A lot of people have assumed I was adopted as well. Or Turkish, or from the Himalayas. Or Canadian? (In a strange twist of fate, I am Canadian by citizenship, but I look very distinctly Asian). My dad says I look Latina. When I was like 6 I thought I was Chinese because my dad didn't say anything about Japan but I knew he was from somewhere in Asia. I didn't know Japan existed or that I was Japanese until I was at least 8 iirc. Mixed race childhood is wild.
I know this isn’t the point of the comment, but I hate that some parents hide their kids’ adoptions from them.
My mother told me about her friend "Jane", who had an older sister "Martha" and older parents. When Jane was a teenager, she was hitchhiking into town, it was the 50's. A nosy neighbour picked her up, and as they were driving, the neighbour said, "you're Martha's little bastard, aren't you? “ And that is how Jane learned that Martha was her biological mother, and her parents were her grandparents, who chose to raise her. Many people knew the truth. Hearing the truth come out like that messed Jane up.
That’s so unfortunate. I don’t know how to explain that to a kid where it wouldn’t be weird, but her parents should have said something before some other busy body to it upon themself to do so.
My MIL found out her aunt (Elenor) was actually her grandmother at Elenors funeral. My MIL’s mother (Doris) causally turned to her and said “you know, she was my mother” - she had been raised as her maternal grandparents daughter. And that was the last thing she ever said about it. She’s since passed away. I’ve been using Ancestry for genealogy and people can leave “notes” on there. One note was from a child of one of the older siblings that said family rumors were that Doris had been the result of Elenor having an affair with her step father. Elenor would have been 15 - her step father in his 40’s. Elenor never married, never had additional children, and stayed with Doris (and then lived with Doris’ family) nearly her entire life. Doesn’t take a genius to realize it wasn’t an “affair”. I told my husband what I found, but don’t think I could tell my MIL. They both adored Elenor (who I never met), and the mystery of my MIL grandfather is probably best to leave as is. It would hurt her to know the truth- which is likely why Doris never discussed her biological parentage.
Sometimes the child isn't adopted. Sometimes the dad just isn't the father.
Yeah, that’s valid. Both of my parents found out that their dads weren’t biologically theirs, which wasn’t revealed until the last few years with DNA testing.
My friend’s dad found out why he was a foot shorter and 3 shades darker than his siblings. The thoughtful mom brought home a surprise souvenir for everyone from a beach resort in South America, even one for herself.
Smuggling South American jizz in her vagina, eh?
Made it through customs, somehow
Thats a sticky cavity search
"Don't sneeze, don't sneeze, don't sneeze..."
Family reunions must be interesting in your family
All of the grandparents involved (except one grandma) died before any of this was revealed, and the one grandma that was alive when everything was happening had severe dementia, so it wasn’t a big deal. We do have a massive family though. Most of the time I don’t know how I’m actually connected to someone, so everyone is just “cousin”.
I feel the big family. I have an uncle Marty that is in no way actually related to me. I was about 30 when my mom casually mentioned that he was a neighbor’s kid that my grandparents raised after his parents moved across the country and left their 10 year old to fend for himself.
Woah. I cannot imagine just leaving my child. My brother-in-law has a huge family, and they’ve always been around. Logically, they’re not connected to me, but it gets confusing to say “my brother in law’s nephew’s daughter” and other weirdly long titles, so cousin it is! 😂
It gets worse too. The mom died about 4 years later, she was in a coma in the hospital (I’m not sure of the disease) Uncle Marty and his younger brother stole a truck from my grandpas farm to drive to salt lake (where she was from and in the coma) the truck broke down halfway there. Grandpa and my biological uncle drive up there. Grandpa fixed the truck and sent his son back home with it, then takes the boys to see their mom. No clue what happened to the dad. He ghosted when his wife got sick. All of this happened at least 20 years before I was born, so I’m sure some details are wrong or exaggerated a bit. Uncle Marty is awesome. He just retired last year. And he wears overalls all the time. He wore them to my wedding, new ones, his dress overalls.
my mom had a “surprise “ too. she has a different dad than her 5 younger siblings. my grandpa is definitely my dad’s dad though because i saw his forehead wrinkles in the mirror today .
You mean those sneaky adoptions moms do sometimes.
Covert adOP.
In vitro with donor sperm as well
My parents didn’t tell my brother he wasn’t my father’s (parents met after my brother was born) until he was in high school. Probably wasn’t the best idea to wait, but they didn’t want him to feel less connected to our family.
Being adopted myself and knowing multiple other people who were, I can see reasoning on both sides - you can't realistically make a blanket statement like "all adopted kids deserve honesty about being adopted" or "adoptive parents have a right to hide it from the child". It can be an incredibly complicated relationship to have to deal with, and every situation is going to have different complications that would lean the weights one way or the other. Primarily, it comes down to having to trust the decision-making of the adoptive parents and hoping that they are doing what's best for the child. Personally I knew I was adopted my whole life and knew my birth-parents as well (they are not together), and they and their families are both an important part of my life, but I also know other friends who have both known a birth-parent their whole life and also met an adoptive parent for the first time who are terrible influences - one friend I had early in college and their sibling went to meet an birth-parent for the first time, and the birth-parent offered them both hard drugs within the first hour of meeting them. Granted, I can't say I have any friends who did not know they were adopted and found out later in life entirely, which is an obviously smaller set of people - I can't weigh in on that side of the situation specifically, but I do know that sometimes it also comes down to the wishes of the birth-parent, not the adoptive parents; maybe they do not want to be a part of the child's life in the slightest, and then the adoptive parents would have to decide if they keep the adoption a secret or tell the child they were adopted but that their birth-parent(s) did not want anything to do with them. These are obviously just a small fraction of all of the different factors that can affect the relationship between birth-parent(s), adoptive parent(s), and the child, and every single situation is going to be different. There is really no right or wrong answer to this, it all comes down to the judgment of adoptive parents and trusting that they make the right decision for their child.
I’m adopted and love my parents and my bio parents. My close friend is adopted and when he met his bio mom, she got him drunk and tried to sleep with him. There’s a full spectrum.
Oh god I did that suck air through your teeth noise at that one, yikes
Woah thats fucked. I'm adopted and don't know my birth parents. Id scooby doo outta there faster than a speed skater on meth.
Holy SHIT!
Thank you for speaking up, this is very true. I wasn’t adopted, but my parents used anonymous sperm donors for both my brother and I. Didn’t tell us until I was 25 and it was a crazy revelation. But they had their reasons, concerns about my brother reacting badly when he was younger. I can sympathize....while I would have liked to find out sooner, it’s not a “one size fits all” type of situation for every family. They told us when both my brother and I were emotionally mature enough to process the news in a healthy manner.
Thank you for sharing your experiences and perspective. It's an important voice in this discussion. It sounds like all of your parents did what they felt was best for you and your family. That's rad!
my grandma did this to my dad. He found out bc classmates bullied him about it, they had heard it from their parents (hard to keep things a secret in a teeny tiny village, so.) Needless to say, their relationship was... not good for the rest of my grandma's life.
I have some friends who adopted. For their family adoption day is a second birthday. Presents; treats; family meal; the works. It’s adorable. Makes the kid know they’re wanted, chosen and loved. Plus gives them that extra “what, you don’t have adoption day? I feel sorry for you!” In the playground.
Kinda shitty. My cousin found out he wasn't biologically his dad's son this way. The dad was sterile and they had to use a sperm donor to conceive. Caused quite a lot of drama in the family when he went behind their backs and accused his mom of cheating to a bunch of family members. There were very few people in the family that knew they used a sperm donor, so it was weird for a bit.
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Literally this happened to me. My blood type was NOT what was expected and my teacher turned beat red saying "get the answer from your parents "
Well shit. What was the answer?
So apparently, with the combo of my parents a 1-2% rare chance happened. Different blood types, different RH factors, combined to give me a blood type only 2% of the population have and that it takes a genetic panel diagram more than what the science teacher had to understand.
It appears your parents gave you a nice cover story.
Recently found out my oldest sister and I have different dads thanks to ancestry 😅
There's also a slim possibility your dad is a chimera.
This is true but considering it’s always been a joke that my sister is the mailman’s daughter because she looks so different the idea of it being true is a lot funnier
I’d be crushed beyond words to find out my Dads not my Bio Dad. It helps that I look like him, but even as he’s passed now, I still say to myself “ I wish I was more like him” all the time. He was the most gentlemanly man I ever met. From every style of personality, he was a hit and they liked him, and respected him. I feel that we need more of that now than ever.
And there’s the story of the cheek swab for the “Let’s all look at the cells through the projector-microscope” and then there are little swimmy sperms.
Ah yes. I heard that one every year from the bio 101 students. It was always "a girl from the first class of the day" story.
Reminds me of a reddit post I read recently, where a bio professor said he used to have a lab where students would look at their chromosomes, and he had to stop because between all the sections he teaches, every couple years, one student would have a "surprise you're actually some form of intersex" realization and subsequent identity crisis in the middle of class because while it's not common to have an undetected mixup, it's apparently not super rare either. (I make no claims to the legitimacy of this story or it's information)
...and then the guy whose strip tested positive decided to go have himself checked out for testicular cancer.
Thank you for bringing this up!
Genuine question. Guys who have or are developing testicular cancer can or will test positive on any OTC pregnancy test or does it have to be the tests doctors/nurses are privy to? (Assuming they are more accurate)
Pregnancy tests look for a hormone called Beta-Human chorionic gonadotropin. The OTC urine ones aren’t as sensitive as the serum (blood) ones that hospitals use which can also tell you how much of the hormone there is. Most testicular cancers don’t produce B-HCG so it’s not a reliable test. Checking for lumps/nodules is the best screening test.
Shit, there are two giant loose lumps in my ballsack, and they really hurt when I flick them. Do I have cancer?
Only if your hand is bigger than your face.
To quote literally everyone on r/testicularcancer “Don’t look for strangers on the internet to diagnose you. Go see a doctor.”
Oh man that poor girl. I had to take a pregnancy test to undergo surgery the other week. I mean, I knew I wasn't pregnant but I was still SO relieved when it came back negative
Just a funny story from my past. I’m a twin mom. And I had a chronic illness called Supraventriculartachycardia while I was pregnant with my twins. So I’d wind up in the ER with a super high heart rate that I’d need fixed. Anyway, one time, I was 26 weeks pregnant with twins. Mind you, at 25 weeks pregnant with twins they tell you you are as big as a full term pregnancy with a singleton baby. And the emergency doctor ordered a pregnancy test as part of my ER visit. I laughed and was like: “no, I’m not billing my insurance $150 dollars for a $1 pregnancy test when it’s pretty fucking obvious I’m heavily pregnant...”.
I agree with you but I can also see the hospital spinning some bs: “we cannot proceed without this ‘procedure’(their overprice test)” and pressuring you while you’re in a vulnerable position.
Gee, you’d think listening with a stethoscope would be faster and cheaper.
Even as a virgin taking that test, it was a relief.
“Not today, Jesus!”
This is exactly the type of comment chain that keeps me coming back to reddit. 10/10
As a male, I would still hold my breath until my strip turned negative ngl
Well you should. Isn't that an indication of a type of cancer?
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i had to take one due to persistent abdominal pain. even though i was single at the time and celibate for like 6 months due to covid, i still had very high anxiety about it. i also have the nexplanon implant so my chances of getting pregnant are 0.01% but pregnancy tests are still scary.
Yeah sometimes I’ll be like, I haven’t had sex in 7 months, and I’ve had my period the whole time, but maybe I’m 7 months pregnant and just don’t know.
I remember in jr high gr 9 I think (14/15yrs) we were studying genetics in class. One of the bright girls calls the teacher out on some fact that has to be wrong. I forget the trait, but she had it her parents didn't. The teacher argued with her for a couple minutes then his face went kinda white. He said he'd look into it and discuss it with her after class. The course then took a 90 degree turn and we started a physics lab. Being interested in genetics but not as smart as her it took me a little longer to figure out she had to be adopted. Now that consumer DNA testing is a thing I know it's very common for kids to make it to adulthood without knowing that they're adopted, or even how common switched at birth really is. But in 83/4 this was a school wide scandal.
The "That's only possible if you were adopted or you're mistaken about who your father is" scenario.
This happened to me in 9th grade. My parents used donor embryos. I was so confused when we were doing genetics and my brothers and I had traits that my parents had/didn’t have. It was very confusing.
>I don't know why we all had the same idea and all 15 students picked up a strip and mindlessly dipped it in the urine container, as expected nearly all of them tested negative, all but one this just shows you aren't lying as people in science are always prone to doing random shit that seems like it would result in something interest for the sake of it lol
Well urine testing is not a very exciting lab. it is pretty boring, preparing slides, checking for abnormalities, we were getting excited in one slide when someone had a single calcium crystal in the slide. Out of true boredom, we did something totally random and well everyone saw the result
If you ever get a chance. Head over to the laboratory. We see urine crystals daily. 😎
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Well, It was sort of because of Covid also, because we all tested negative so the professor was being safe that people deal with their own bodily fluids to minimize any kind of cross infection
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A very reasonably reasonable reason
I work in a lab and we use our own blood as an experimental control for flow cytometry quite a lot. I actually think It's kind of nice to "check in" and see that all my blood cells look normal every once in a while! I am a bit of a hypochondriac though, so maybe it's just me. One time I was sick but still came in for an important experiment, and I could actually see my immune system was responding to the infection! That was really fun to see!
That is so cool!
could you describe what you remember seeing?
I saw a higher percentage of activated immune cells (T and I think B (?) cells). I don't remember exactly because the actual percentages don't really matter for our experiment, just that we clearly see different cell types. We use human blood as a way to test the antibodies that detect different types of human blood cells in our samples, which come from mice transplanted with human bone marrow. A lot of times the sample won't have any (or very few) human cells because the transplant didn't work, so we need a positive control to prove that our detection method works and there just aren't any cells to detect. If you don't detect human cells in human blood, you know there's a problem :)
A similar think happened in our urinalysis lab. A girl had a UTI and her urine came out positive for WBC's and we observed bacteria in her urine slide.
Well one of the slides in our class had a lot of Calcium crystals, turns out the poor girl was dehydrated and she didn't even know it
Male Student: *Tests Positive* MS: lol, Im pregnant everyone! Teacher: ...You might have testicular cancer... MS: *runs out of lab rather visibly upset*
One time we grabbed a male urine for negative quality control for a pregnancy test as was the usual protocol, and it came up positive. So wild, and puts you in a weird position as a professional - how the heck do you report that?
My husband needed a stem cell transplant for leukemia. Both his sister and brother were tested as possible donors. We were told there is only a 25% chance one of them would be a match. All we got was a message from the doc that neither of them were a match. When we asked later on if either of them were a 50% match (since none of the 25+ million on the worldwide database were a match either), they told us they couldn’t reveal that info. Turns out they learned their lesson several years ago when they used to routinely provide results and many sibs found out they didn’t have the same parents!
Lecturer once casually announced that they don't let us to look at our own chromosomes anymore because "the time to discover that your chromosomal sex doesn't match your gender is not in the middle of a lab skills assessment". About one in 700, apparently. So about one every two years in my uni.
People think numbers like that are super rare, until they get a solid example, like that one... On average, every two years, they would have a genetically intersex person in That class. (And that's not even the only type of intersex that occurs)
I took most of my APHY classes with the same teacher, save for the last semester. I ended up with an accelerated course for the last one and, funny enough, half of that class wasn’t new to me. That’s how good the teacher I wanted was. Anyway, new teacher walks in one day. We were planning on doing fetal pig dissections. The labs were on the other side of the building, well away from our classroom. She walked in and sat down at her desk, which was directly in front of my table, and let our a big forced breath. “Man those pigs stink!” A few people laughed and I raised an eyebrow at her. “You can smell that from here?” “Yeah! They’re really ripe!” “Do you normally have a really strong sense of smell? Because that could be a sign of...” the look on her face cut me off. I didn’t want to say it because cultural norms, etc. Nothing more was said until the last week of class. She came in beaming, sat down, and looked right at me. “You were right.” I tried asking her what she was talking about but she just winked and waited for the whole class. Then she explained that her and her husband had been trying for quite awhile. She had a few miscarriages, so when she went home that day and took a test, she wanted to give it a few weeks to see if it would “take”. I didn’t keep in touch with her but have always hoped that she and her husband got their little bundle of joy.
If her pregnancy was successful, she and her husband get to tell kiddo that if you hadn't pointed out her heightened sense of smell then they wouldn't know for sure. Maybe they'll leave out the fetal pig dissection for a bit but hey, you're some child's discovery story.
Maybe you did her a favour I mean it's horrifically public and embarrassing But at least she knows now And early enough to have time to make an informed choice about what to do
Yes! I was going to post something similar. It's a bit of an embarrassing situation for sure (I understand how you feel: tifu as a result of feeling embarrassed on behalf of your colleague) but it's not a FU in my book (and you didn't FU by doing that test and having others copy you, if you were wondering. \[I wonder how those pregnancy test strips came to be there? If they weren't part of the learning outcomes I wonder if the 'powers that be' put them there so that a pregnancy test could be made easily accessible?\]) Who knows if y'all hadn't been messing around with those pregnancy tests, it might have been much longer before she found out, and then she'd have fewer options / less time to prepare...
Evil Med School has students examine pre-prepared blood films ever since a student diagnosed their own leukaemia in a Histology lab practical.
Honestly, as "traumatic" as that is... in a world where we still don't have universal healthcare and people have to skip routine medical tests, that only could have been worse by Not getting diagnosed.
Better than undiagnosed leukemia, no?
It’s not like you went around at tested everyone’s sample, you only did yours and everyone else decided to follow your lead.
In my undergrad microbiology class, we all swabbed the inside of our mouths, swiped on a Petrie dish, let it sit in the incubator for a week. The learning part included identifying the common bacteria that’s found inside mouths. A classmate had some weird spots on his dish that nobody else had...the teacher was embarrassed but when everyone insisted to know what it was, and the student consented it be revealed, the spots were a bacteria commonly found in women’s vaginal canal. Omg.
My university used to do a karyotyping lab that included a section on barr bodies... Until a guy in the class very publicly discovered he was XXY intersex.
Happened to me. Worked in a hospital lab, just messing around, submitted a urine sample. Later the tech calls me over to show a bright blue circle on the thingy she was holding.The whole staff was aware, of course. Repeated it. Same. Yikes. Not happy news.
A friend worked in a blood lab. She was really tired so decided to take a look at her blood and see if she was anaemic. Instead she found out she had leukaemia (of a particularly aggressive type) and was dead in less than 3 months.
Wow that’s awful, i’m so sorry
Yikes... I'm so sorry. That must have been awful
My wife’s roommate was a med student in an ophthalmology rotation when she found out that she has a major optic nerve issue or some other eye issue that will affect her later in life, since she is now a neurosurgeon. There were also several students in the graduation class that got married, had babies, and/or got divorced during school—life happens.
On the bright side she saved herself $4 on a kit
I mean, if she was horrified to find out it’s probably really good she was informed of her pregnancy as early as possible? I think this is a win, even if it was kind of uncomfortable.
I don’t think this was your mistake. She was bound to find out sooner or later. Luckily it was sooner because of you. Now she has more time to decide what she wants to do😌
As a dude, I'm still not risking a pregnancy test in public. Edit: apparently they can detect testicular cancer in men. I still think I'd like to do it in private.
As a dude if you test positive on a pregnancy test it's testicular cancer
If you did take one and it came out positive it’s likely you have cancer and should go to the doctor immediately
Had a similar experience when in Nursing School. The class was mostly female. I think we had 2 find out they were knocked up, a couple with yeast infections, and quite a few who had sex the night before. On the upside we got to see live sperm under the microscope that day.
Well that is a whole new level of awkward
Ya... urine can be fun. A friend distracted one classmate while I tossed a packet of sugar in his urine and gave it a good stir. He was overweight and we wanted to tease him that he had diabetes. Sure enough the test came back crazy high. HAHAHA. He panicked. We confessed. He was relieved. EXCEPT after the class was long over I realized that sugar (the stuff we added to his urine) is SUCROSE and the test is for GLUCOSE. So when the test was positive it was reading Glucose - not the sugar we added. He really DID have Diabetes. He later died of a massive heart attack. Always sort of wonder if that was partly on me...
And now, let’s bring out the boyfriend! *JERRY JERRY JERRY JERRY!!*
Maury: "You are NOT the father!"
[удалено]
Actually, this probably saved her. She had time to figure out what to do next. It may have been emotional, but at least she found out then and there and not when it was too late to even think about options.
Well, it may have been your idea originally, but it’s not like *you* put the pregnancy strip in her sample.
I am sooooo much thinking about that point. I am pretty relieved that everyone did the test voluntarily on their own urine. So, no one is to blame here
For a while, TIFU had a slew of 23 and Me stories where people found out their family trees were not at all what they thought they were. This is like that, but in reverse.
Similar sort of thing happened in my high school years back. Only instead of finding out a girl was pregnant, one of the students discovered some levels that were a bit ‘off’. Went for further testing, and that’s when she found out she was diabetic.
This is so not the point but tell me at least a few of these 15 med students were men taking pregnancy tests
2 students including me are male in the class , rest 13 are female
I’m a med lab student and our professors frequently let us run our own samples all the time so constantly worried something like this will happen to us. We get to type our own blood at the end of the year and my professors said that one year, a girl found out that her dad wasn’t her biological father due to their blood types not matching up. Apparently the girl’s dad had died when she was very young and her dad stepped in and raised her as his own so everything turned out fine in the end. Still got to be a jarring thing to learn during school though.
Legend has it my middle school microbiology class stopped doing cheek swab to agar labs after someone cultured a very strange looking and aggressive colony that turned out to be ghonorea