I recently was in the hospital with an infection following surgery. an area of puss was swabbed and the results came back as a rare gram positive cocci. when i asked the doctor what that meant, she just said it was a staff infection. can you shed any?

Staph infection: In this case, "rare" refers to the quantity of bacteria seen on a quick microscope review, not whether it's a normal bacteria or not. Staphylococcus species (staph for short) and Streptococcus species (strep) are the most common skin bacteria. Both are gram positive (description of staining) cocci (round bacteria under microscope). Neither species would be surprising in a wound infection.