Learning Experience

Activity: Fecalysis
Date Performed: October 21, 2009

This activity was one of the most exciting activities we had done in our Biology class. Why? One thing is that it involved feces (ewww) and another thing is that we made a fecal smear and examined it as if we were really Medical Technologists. It is really one of the best laboratory activities ever!

After gathering all the necessary materials like the microscope, glass slide and the Normal Saline Solution (NSS), the most important specimen was placed at the center of the table. Jzer brought it which was according to him was his sister’s feces. When Sir Danda opened the container, the smell of the feces penetrated our olfactory senses. One of the most important things to remember is that feces are naturally smelly! Then Sir Danda showed us how to make a smear by dipping a toothpick in all corners of the feces in the container and spreading it in circular motion in the glass slide with a drop of NSS. One thing to remember is that the smear should only have a thin surface to be able to view it clearly under the microscope. Then after making the smear, he placed in under the LPO (10x) and started viewing it. After sometime, he let us view the specimen and we saw different things. There were granule-like substances in circular shape and some fibers were also visible. There were also clumps of granules which Sir Danda said were undigested food. One of our objectives was to see even a single egg that is why we were a bit disappointed at first because we didn’t see any egg of parasite. But after some minutes of constant scrutiny, Sir Danda was able to detect an egg. It was a red oval-shaped egg which Sir Danda said was the egg of Trichuris trichuria (Tt). Of course, we were thrilled to know that there are eggs of parasite in the feces! Our objective was met! Success! The secret behind that is that you should just be meticulous and patient in looking at the specimen. Right?

After the activity, we threw the glass slide and disinfected the working table. This is to make sure that the table is clean and safe from bacteria. Then we returned the microscope in the stock room.