Flashback to rotations

Nothing specific, but an interaction with a random person in a store today reminded me of the weirdest experience with one of the residents.

Me on dictation: "The specimen (an aggregate of normally soft tissue) is diffusely indurated; however, no masses are grossly noted."

Two days later, the resident to my staff PA (that I'm standing next to), "Was there a mass in that specimen."

Staff PA, "No, I don't think so, but you can double check with [me]"

Me, "There wasn't a distinct mass, it was an aggregate and it was all relatively firm."

Resident, "But a mass would upstage the diagnosis, so I need to know if there was a measurable mass."

Me, "There was not a mass."

Resident, "Nevermind, I'll just pull the bucket and look at it myself."

Me, "..."

Sometimes some people just really need to see something with their own eyes to confirm or disprove a mental picture they've developed.... that mass was her Schrödinger's cat of tumors, neither there or not there until she directly observed it.

Plus, I'm pretty sure she always disliked me and when you don't like someone it taints all of your interactions with them. Luckily, I really only had to work with her on autopsy so it didn't impact the year too much (except... you know, on autopsy).

Frozens

So, most of the surgeries for frozen section happen in the morning, which means that by the time I get

Blue is the prettiest!

into work they've already been done and are fixing. Well, one day not so long ago we had a busy day for frozens that stretched until after the hisotechs left. Usually one of the pathologist will do the afternoon frozens, but we had a fill in while one of our doctors was on vacation and he seemed to assume that I was going to do it. So I did it. It is a different cryostat from the other ones I've used but they're similar enough and the sections were tolerable. I do like having tinted OCT, which is something we didn't have at school. It makes it easier to differentiate one chuck from another (other than the positions in the holes in the cryostat). 

One foot out of the door...

Some days you just have to accept it. Specimens come in right at the end of the day, when everything else is already loaded on the processors and the clock is already reading quitting time. And then... after those get grossed and the processors are loaded again and everything is shut down, that's when the pathologist comes in to talk about a specimen from the day before. So the specimen gets dug out and looked at, and finally the day can end.

And that is what happens. Not every day, but sometimes. Usually, as Murphy's Law decrees on the day you need to get home early for some reason or another. But it is part of the job, it is never a steady workload. Medicine tends more towards feast and famine than anything else. So you accept it, gross the things that come in last minute because no one wants to wait another day for their test results and maybe tomorrow would be a busier day and you'd hate yourself for not doing it. You look over the specimen with the pathologist because he's working even later than you are and can't wrap up his work until he sees for sure that the specimen is the way it is.

Meanwhile, I have a pile of pathology mp3s to keep me entertained on my commute.

QUEST

I went to a residential high school and every night from 8-10 pm we had QUEST, quiet uninterrupted, enforced study time. It isn't exactly a lifetime habit that's stayed with me... But in the past year I've been making an effort to not screw over my future self. Procrastination is one of those things that always harms your future self. Of course sometimes it doesn't work, like the time my laptop crashed and ATE my portfolio a week before it was due. But mostly having enough time to not feel rushed is great.

I know that I have to take the certification exam, so I'm making an effort to study Robbins at a comfortable pace. It would be fantastic if I could utilize some of my commute for studying so I'm working on figuring that out :) It is 2+ hours a day I'm not using otherwise, unless you count whatever it is I learn from NPR.

But until then I'm making it a point to study a little every day, my own self inflicted morning QUEST. It is much easier to study now, this is all stuff I've been before. It isn't effortless (and I can honestly say that I've thoroughly enjoyed not having to study on a regular basis so there is the psychological hurdle to overcome), but it isn't so bad.

How to spot which child takes after me...

All the men in my household are currently carving pumpkins (I stepped in to help with the gut removal). The youngest child is singing "Knife goes in, guts come out" which if you know the song means we enjoyed the same sort of pop culture back in the 90s. He's gleefully playing in pumpkin innards and making jokes about guts, even going to far as to help his father empty his gourd.

Meanwhile the oldest child is dry heaving and almost threw up in his bag of pumpkin waste... Poor kid, but he toughed it out and hollowed out his pumpkin. I appreciate that he didn't give up.