by Chris Conte

NASHVILLE, Tenn.-The microbiology lab at Vanderbilt Hospitalis the kind of place that would make any high school biology drop-out cringe, filled with vials, test tubes and enough petri dishes to fill a small warehouse.

"I'm looking for specific structures that correlate to this organism," says lab technologist Tonya Snyder while looking into a microscope.

For those that might find this place overwhelming though you can be glad it is filled with people like Tonya Snyder.

"We look through the cultures, see what might be growing," she explains.

Over the last 19 years she's been looking through microscopes here, examining cultures from patients and helping doctors make diagnosis. But whatshe saw three weeks ago on a slide from a sickened patient though was the beginning of the meningitis outbreak.

"It's tragic," she said.

It's not that Tonya had never seen this type of aspergillus fumigatus fungus before, she'd just never seen it from someone's spinal fluid.

"I don't think anybody could've seen this coming," Tonya added.

When all of this is over withhistory will record this lab as being the place where fungal meningitis first was found.

Read more from the original source:
Inside Vanderbilt Lab Where Meningitis Outbreak Was Discovered