Fastidious bacteria. Refuse to grow without their symbiotes.

I first began to suspect that something was wrong when my cultures
came back negative after I had made what I thought was a positive ID
using a  friend's materials in the meantime, but just ager rather than
standard culture medium.  I had miserable time to do it  because it
took nearly 6 weeks to get in to see the University Hosptial ENT.
I knew the bacteria were there, I had had no treatment in the mean
time,  so why did they not show up in the hospital tests?
I think because the culture medium is doped with antifungals, and the
bacteria need that preticular fungal buddy to grow.
That was the first inkling that hospital cultures are not very
sensitive.  I havn't been able to find any real data on this, except
for one John's Hopkins study of MRSA that said that they had to test
the same persons for it 3 times to culture it once.