Containing the Sample – The Weird Side of the Internet

Containing the Sample – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

Sometimes you hear something that’s pretty benign, but just freaking out there. For a prime example, going to the doctors to get checked out. And you know part of it is getting the sealed cup and being directed to the bathroom with the magic box in the wall where your filled cup does a Houdini act. Some simple act of life, a test of wits, you against the fact that you had to go before you left the house and your being so late to the appointment that you forgot to drink up. The eternal test of urinary hide and seek.

But a clinic in Scotland has a different problem. The Saltoun Surgery in Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire. Has issued a desperate request; do not bring in “inappropriate and unsolicited” urine samples.

What?

So people have been coming to the clinic with suspect pee in whatever containers they can find. What’s British for Tupperware? Yeah, that. Maybe emptied out pudding cups tied about with saran wrap and rubber bands. This blows my mind, just walking into a WellThen and handing them a juice box with most decidedly not juice in them. There’s a taped strip on the real ones for a reason, folks. Most of the people are older and are checking for UTIs, but still, the leftover “fruit on the bottom” yogurt, mixed with liquid gold, will probably sprout some microorganisms that will make the doctors blush.

It just boggles my mind that people would show up with their own sample. Without being asked. In any old thing. You know, maybe doctors should just mail their patients a pack of urine sample cups, with a warning in big bold letters: “Do not put your steak rub in this. I’m not sure if Scotland is prone to steak rubs, but they shouldn’t put any haggis in them either.

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