File:20110322 193829 Bacteria SMB UTI.jpg

English:
  These bacteria were cultured from a urine sample from a woman who thought she had a urinary tract infection.  I'm definitely not seeing any Escherichia Coli in this sample, which is supposedly the most common agent by far in such infections; that, being Gram-negative would have stained pink.  Perhaps the cocci might be Staphylococcus saprophyticus, that supposedly being a distant second most common cause of such infections.  I don't know what the bacilli might be, I have no information about any form of those that are common in this sort of infection.  But then, I'm strictly an amateur at this sort of thing.

  Surely it is a symptom that one's hobby is making one weird; when one's first reaction, on hearing from one's wife that she thinks she might have a urinary tract infection, is to want a sample to examine under one's microscope.

  I didn't actually see much on directly examining the sample provided by my wife, so I put a bit of it in a Petri dish to see what I could culture out.  This was much slower to grow than other bactiera I have cultured in this manner.  After ten days, using Micrology Laboratories' Easygel medium at room temperature, I had grown barely enough for one slide.

  This picture was taking using a 100× oil-immersion objective, together with a 15× eyepiece that contains the numbered scale that appears in this image.  The numbered ticks on the scale are eleven (11) microns apart, the smaller unnumbered ticks being 1.1 microns apart.  And of course, this sample was Gram-stained.