Page 7 - Dad's St Jude Projecy

any teaching. That was good news to me, as teaching was not my
forte—especially medical students with their assigned note taker

wondering why they had to learn all of this basic science that they
would never use! So I took the forms, returned them to the
business manager, who informed me that, because I was a woman
with a working husband, I would not be eligible for the extra
dependent stipend. I informed him that that was unfair; I happened

to know that a graduate student in biochemistry was getting extra
stipend for both his wife and child, and his wife was working. I was
only asking for my 2 year old daughter as I had to pay someone to
take care of her; I wasn’t asking for a stipend for my husband. I

went back to Dr. Slotnick and told him that I had decided to remain
as a teaching assistant at UTHSC. He frowned and said he would
discuss this with Dr. Donald Pinkel, the Medical Director. A few
hours later he called me at UTHSC and said that NIH had approved
the extra stipend for my child.

The hospital design of St. Jude may have won awards, but certain
features were a bit disconcerting—the air conditioning and heating
were not separated, but for some reason both went on at the same
time throughout the year for some sort of balance. This

occasionally led to pipes above the lab ceilings to drip. The
bacteriology lab had a “warm room” held at 37.5 degrees Celsius,
and it was large enough to also contain the embryonated egg
incubator for the growth of Dr. Robert Webster’s flu virus

specimens, a “shaker”machine that held flasks and circulated them
to keep the contents mixed, (desirable for the growth of bacteria),
and of course shelves to house Petri dishes with cell and bacterial
cultures. The “sterile rooms” across the hall were used primarily by
those needing to work with viruses and cells in a sterile

environment and were treated with UV light for 30 minutes before
anyone entered to work with cell culture.

The freezers that lined the hall contained frozen samples of cells,
bacteria, and viruses. For long term storage there was a tank of
liquid nitrogen for samples that had to be kept ultra-cold. The

liquid nitrogen was purchased offsite and had to be replaced