Last Minute Gift Suggestions

Who has time to shop these days, with all the CLABSI tracking and public reporting. To satisfy everyone's inner geek, I've compiled a few gift suggestions. (Note: no one affiliated with this blog has any relationship, financial or otherwise, with any of the retailers mentioned or linked)

1) Giant Microbes - Cuddle up with a stuffed E. coli or even an H1N1 virus - perfect for those cold nights.

2) A Staphylococcus aureus bowtie would be nice. Look good and protect your patients. You certainly would be in good standing around here.

3) DNA Mini-Portraits - Swab your cheek, mail it in and get a beautiful picture of your DNA to share with that special significant other. Maybe you could compare a friend's DNA to your locally circulating Acinetobacter strain and marvel at the similarity.

4) Charles Darwin poster - Chicago artist Diana Sudyka has many amazing posters for sale, but none speak to the constant struggle of infection prevention more than the one of young Darwin. If we could just get bacteria to stop believing in evolution our jobs would be so much easier. Come to think of it, we might be out of work all together. Yeah evolution.

5) Finally, from Baltimore - epidemiologist JJ Furuno recently received a frog tank in the mail with everything one needs for a special frog habitat: tank, gravel, rocks, food, bamboo....and two dead frogs. He was pretty sad. We don't recommend shipping living things in the mail, but if you must, wait until summer.