I know I'm a newbie who gets to nervous, but I'm sure you look deep into your blury past you can remember your first brew and you probably had similar excitement and fear.
Not really...I had read enough from folks on here and other places telling the other newbies not to worry, and everything would be fine, that since I saw 50 typical threads saying the samething for the same reasons, I figured my beer was NO different than there's.....That's kinda why I came here even before I ever participated I lurked, and read, and learned.
But that's how I am wired, I learn things and that calms me down. I look at other folks issues, realizes they are the same as mine, and relax. Then I try to help other people.
The problem is, you can cause more damage now by messing with the beer checking it than you can by just trusting the process.
There is a certain level of faith you have to have.
Yeasts just don't "NOT WORK" these days. That's an old idea from 30 years ago, not the reality these days. Given enough time the yeast does what it needs to do.
I am going to give you my standard rant about how, for the most part, the idea of "bad yeast" is really bogus....
Of god knows how many batches of beer I have made....
I have never had fermentation not start, or a beer not turn out ok, and I have never ever ever had to add more yeast to a beer.
Except for infecting a starter due to poor sanitization, it really really is hard for yeast NOT to do what they do naturally.
That's how we can make a huge starter from the dregs of a bottle of beer...we let the viable (living) cells reproduce, and we feed them incrementally, and they continue to reproduce.
Seriously most LHBS know enough about what they are doing in terms of proper yeast storage, same with suppliers, it doesn't take a genius these days to know how to stick liquid (and dry yeasts usually) in a fridge, and ship in bulk in a styrofoam cooler.
We're talking billion dollar corporations (the yeast labs, and that's what they are LABS) and they aren't going to risk their rep by letting their suppliers and stores that carry their stuff , handle it improperly.
Besides...Yeast IS hardier than most newish brewers wanna give them props for...I mean You can't say that THIS YEAST was stored "properly" and yet, they managed to make a batch of beer with it.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-08/ff_primordial_yeast
If we can make beer with that....then our yeast is going to work as well. 
