I had almost forgotten how dumb I was in Microbiology lab. I kinda liked the classroom part. Memorizing eighteen different names for eighteen different bacteria that cause eighteen different kinds of gas in the intestinal system was easy. I just wrote 'em all down..........turned the paper over, wrote 'em all down again, checked to see which ones I got wrong, started over with another piece of paper......did this some ten or twelve times and voila! I had learned enough to pass a test the next day. But..........Micro lab.........that was a different story.

It was the microscopes that did me in. Week in and week out, we had to peer into these #$!*%$@! microscopes and draw pictures of what we saw there. Week after week, I looked, adjusted the various dials and saw............squiggly lines, white, blurry looking things, green, blurry looking things and...............most of all...nothing at all. I could make the light brighter and see nothing as bright as day. I could turn the light dimmer and see nothing in the dark. I could turn up the magnification and see nothing X ten.

For four and a half months, I stared into those microscopes. I tried every microscope in the entire room...........nothing! People all over the room were drawing like mad while I was moving the lens up and down looking for something to look at. I poked myself in the eye more times than you would believe, trying to catch a glimpse of what every other person in the room was seeing. I would take the slide out and turn it over. Still nothing there. I would increase the magnification to the point where a dust particle looked like a ten story building. I never DID find anything that even remotely resembled what my classmates were drawing.

How then did I pass Microbiology lab? How do you think? I cheated! I would turn to the girl on my right and say "Excuse me. The nucleus in my cell isn't very well formed. May I see how your's looked to you?" She would hold up her drawing and I would sketch like mad. Once she was again absorbed in looking through that little hole in the whatchamacallit of her microscope, I would turn to the girl on my left. "Uh.......excuse me. I can't seem to zero in on the stuff inside the nucleus of the cell. May I see what they looked like to you?" She would show me what she had drawn and I would copy up a storm.

Four and a half months and the only thing I ever saw for sure was when I would stick my finger under where the slides were supposed to go and see ridges. Whorles, I think they are called. No germs, amoeba, liver cells of fruit flies like everybody else saw.........whorles was all I ever saw.

Why am I remembering those microscopes? I'll tell you why. Today, I had to attend a class on how to read X-rays. Some of you already know that the County hospital where I earn my daily bread, is moving to a new, three quarters of a billion dollar edifice. Everything in this hospital is brand new and state of the art. One of the new, state of the art things there is a computer that allows doctors and nurses to read X-rays on the monitor of a computer.

I'm not overly modest. There are many things I do as a nurse that I am extremely good at. I'll not bore (or make you nauseous) by listing these things. I WILL say that reading an X-ray isn't one of them. For the last fifteen years, I've watched doctors and nurses hold an X-ray up to the light and mumble things like "Look at that.......no question about it! That's an ilieus if I ever saw one." I would be peering over a shoulder and see what I used to see through those stupid microscopes in Microbiology. Absolutely nuthin' but a buncha wavy lines.

With what I've come to accept as my lot in life, I was paired with my boss, the Head Nurse on our floor. We were there to fine tune our talents as readers of X-rays. The instructor showed us how to use Windows 95 (piece of cake), how to click on icons (more cake) then, how to bring up X-rays on the screen (uh oh!).

There we were. Looking at an X-ray. The instructor showed my boss how to split the image into four parts. Each one representing a different view of the image on the screen. He then showed her how to magnify it, how to draw a circle around it, how to turn it upside down and how to make it darker and/or lighter. The both of them were having a ball. They clicked this and that and the image did everything but dance.

My boss was asking all kinds of intelligent questions about density, bone mass, access modes and what not. ME? I was looking over her shoulder and afraid to ask the obvious question. What was this an X-ray OF? It looked like a leg bone. Then, they would click here and there and it would look like a neck bone. It was Microbiology and those blankety blank microscopes all over again.

"See where they injected the dye there?" My boss goes "um hmm! " I take off my glasses and wipe them. "See how the remains of the dye show where the tumor is?" My boss goes "Um hmmm". I'm almost squirming in my seat now. What tumor? What dye? What happened to the leg bone? Is this still the leg bone we are looking at? What's that black thing in the corner? Is that what they are talking about?

The instructor turns the image on it's side.....then right side up again. No question about it now. It's either a leg bone or an arm bone. No way am I going to interrupt and ask which. The class is over now. The instructor backs us out of Windows 95 and we all three stand. My boss turns to me and asks "Well Loyal........you think you feel qualified to teach this system to new nurses now?" I assure her I am now super qualified.

I'm following my boss out the door when I hear several nurses talking about contrast. "It's hard to see an impaired thyroid gland unless you increase the contrast." I look back over my shoulder. Thyroid gland? What's a thyroid gland doin' six inches from a leg bone?

Or was that an arm bone we were looking at?

I keep telling you............

It ain't easy being clueless.