The kids are alright..."Monkey on the loose in San Antonio Airport"

[BobM]

Years ago, on another forum, a former deputy in Texas related a tale of putting down a chimp. As I recall, it was moving around a small town and biting people on their Achilles' tendons.

[Lost River]

Ha! That angle never even occurred to me, but the story is sort of made up. I had a lab exposure to monkey serum, and I guess a lazy worker in employee health just decided to write "monkey bite" in my record. I don't think that I've ever actually touched a monkey. I found out about the false entry a few years later when I had my TB test read and glimpsed my chart over the nurses shoulder.



That's awful--definitely a much bigger danger than my exposure. As I understand it, monkeys can test negative but then shed virus when they are stressed. The samples I was working with came from "negative" monkeys, but the test isn't entirely trustworthy. (Maybe the tests are better now though. Seems like a decent serology test would be possible.) Mine and my wife's families came to visit for Thanksgiving the following week. I hadn't told them that I might die from Herpes B virus infection, but by that point I was greater than 99% sure I'd be okay (up from about 95% immediately following the exposure). I figured I'd have a little fun with the situation, so I left my giant bottle of Valtrex prominently displayed on the kitchen counter. My wife didn't see the humor in it and disappeared the bottle to our bathroom.

'Ha! That angle never even occurred to me, but the story is sort of made up. I had a lab exposure to monkey serum, and I guess a lazy worker in employee health just decided to write "monkey bite" in my record. '


HOLY CRAP! I read that second sentence as " I had a lab exposure to monkey "semun", and I guess a lazy worker in employee health just decided to write "monkey bite" in my record.




I simply thought " semun" was a typo for semen.. When you read the story under the context of semen and are half looped, it is rather comical!!

[pangloss]

'Ha! That angle never even occurred to me, but the story is sort of made up. I had a lab exposure to monkey serum, and I guess a lazy worker in employee health just decided to write "monkey bite" in my record. '


HOLY CRAP! I read that second sentence as " I had a lab exposure to monkey "semun", and I guess a lazy worker in employee health just decided to write "monkey bite" in my record.




I simply thought " semun" was a typo for semen.. When you read the story under the context of semen and are half looped, it is rather comical!!

That would make for a much different story! People do work with all sort of samples. I'm certain that by now someone somewhere has measured Zika virus titers in monkey semen. I'd be okay with measuring virus in monkey semen, but I wouldn't want to collect the samples!!!