I called in sick, took a Tylenol 3, Flexeril (a new muscle relaxant that someone recommended I try), Ibuprofen and Benedryl and went back to bed.  And then I got a call from Human Resources that I had to come work.  I didn’t have any more leave left and if I didn’t come to work I could lose my job.  I told her about all the medication that I had just taken, but she basically insisted that I come to work.  So I got out of bed, my head in serious pain and all meds starting to fully kick in.  I definitely should not be driving but I definitely can’t lose my job. Quite the conundrum!  But I headed in to work.  When I arrived I was told I couldn’t do any work because of the medications that I was taking.  Human resources vs. boss made it so that I had to come in to work but I can’t work.  Well except for desk work.

So for the next week I was given the task to figure out why the process we were using to harvest botulinum toxin from C. botulinum.   We had been having difficulty producing large amounts of toxins, so I started going through past documents to determine what we might do to better the process.   So I went back to the very beginning!