Interesting day today. My lab uses a chemical called Trizol to extract DNA from plant tissue. I keep my plant tissue frozen with liquid nitrogen and then dump it in the Trizol. For those who don't know, liquid nitrogen changes to a gas very quickly and gas expands. Put it into a closed tube and, well, it'll blow. I thought all the liquid nitrogen in my sample had dried up, so I went ahead and stuck it in the tube and closed it. It then blew up right in my face. I never had to use the eye washer thing in my lab, so that was a first. As I stand there hunched over with high pressure water gushing into my eyes, my coworker walks by and starts reading off the consequences of getting Trizol in there. Clouding of the cornea, swelling, tissue damage, and eventual blindness were some of the few charming issues that were potentially ahead of me.
A hospital trip later and it turns out I got to the eye washer fast enough. No blindness to speak of just yet. I didn't remember when I last got a tetanus shot, so I ended up getting one of those too. This all comes during one of the longest freaking weeks I've had in a long time. UGH.
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Confusion will be my epitaph...
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