Assistant obtained and conversations relevant to my interests

The new assistant started on Monday. He's learning all the ropes and seems keen. I'm fairly low maintenance so, I'm fine waiting until he's finished learning all the non-gyn processing and administrative tasks before making him learn any random preferences of mine (how the rack is oriented in the formalin tub matters!!!).

In other news, my husband and I were out watching soccer at a local wine bar and the lady next to me was discussing a friend of hers with diabetes. She checks up on him every other day and runs errands for him. Apparently he had developed a festering foot wound and for months the odor was nauseating. When she found out it had maggots she manufactured an issue with his prescription refills (working with the pharmacy and doctor's office) that forced him to go to the doctor's office for a follow up visit. Now, maggot therapy is a thing but that is under controlled circumstances and not wild maggots that have just shown up after being attracted to the necrosis. So the woman says how the man's doctor referred him to a wound care specialist and things are being treated currently.

It was a great conversation to be around and I joined in, because how often do I get to discuss maggots and necrotic toes in public serendipitously?

Having an assistant is great!

I really miss having one! All the little things that used to just get done aren't magically getting done! So the histotechs are doing some of them, I'm doing some of them, and the pathology manager is doing some of them. It'll be so nice when someone is hired again and trained.

I'm taking the gross photos myself, which I'm able to do and it isn't an onerous task. It is just an end of day thing that stands between me and going home. Whereas when there is an assistant it would all just happen while I was still grossing and it would have a picture before I even got it to describe. It was nice. The interviews continue on, but I think the last one will be next week sometime. I'll be out of town!

Things in my life and goodbyes!

The most important thing that's happened in my life lately is that my husband became an American citizen yesterday! His allowed to maintain his original citizenship so I'm glad that he didn't have to give anything up for this to happen, which is what my mother had to do when she went through the process almost thirty years ago. It means I don't get to make anymore jokes about deporting him when he irks me (usually with bad jokes of his own!), but now he can vote and really belong to the country he's made his home for the past twelve years.

Then today he had sinus surgery, which was less exciting and momentous but important all the same. His specimen went to the pathology group where I used to work and my old coworkers promised to keep an eye for it. It is one of those totally benign things where you're just sending it for insurance purposes though, so no need to prioritize it. He'll be hanging out on the couch for a week or so recuperating, with plentiful popsicles and DVDs to keep him company.

Grumpy cat says, Good Luck, you'll need it.

Now for work news... oh, sadness and happiness! My lab assistant is leaving on Friday to enjoy a few months break before she starts medical school in August since her husband has already moved up to start his job near where she'll be going to school. She's been a great assistant and I know she'll do well at PCOM! I'll miss her, since we've worked very closely together and she's the only one in the lab with me for several hours in the day, but she's leaving for a good reason and I wish her so well. To that end, the head of our department and I wanted to give her a little sendoff, and since she loves grumpy cat I made her this one! It is her sense of humor and hopefully she likes it.

Tan that is just...tan

A while back I was triaging a kidney and one of the pathologists wandered by and asked if it had a

So tan!

mass. I said that it did and he asked me what it looked like. I told him that it was tan. He asked if it was yellow tan, maybe hemorrhagic? And I told him no, it was tan... Solid tan. Uniform and...tan, just tan and didn't look like an RCC at all.

Then the kidney gets grossed and the slides go out.  The pathologist is on vacation, the one filling in for him gets the case and pops his head into the gross room to ask me what color the tumor was (while holding a copy of the gross description??). I told him it was tan and expressed surprise because I thought I had dictated that (I'm terrified that the dictation system, which is occasionally glitchy, will not pick up some really pertinent information). He looked at the paper in his hand, underlined something, and said "oh yes, tan" but... then he stood there. I went ahead and told him that it wasn't tan yellow, it wasn't hemorrhagic, it wasn't cystic, and it wasn't mahogany. It was tan. He said thank you and left.

About half an hour later the other pathologist comes in and says he wants to ask me about the kidney tumor.... Oh goodness. He asked me what color the tumor was, if maybe it was more tan red or mahogany. I told him, sorry no. It was just tan and I said there wasn't a central white scar in it either, since I knew that was going to be a relevant follow up question. Then he said thanks, said he thought it was an oncocytoma anyway, and left.

It was funny. I know that things tend to be pink-tan, white-tan, yellow-tan, brown-tan, etc, etc, but this one was genuinely just tan, like a paint chip of uniform color. Patients don't read the text books so things often don't present as expected and you can't take it personally if the pathologists question and dig to see if they can't get the gross description to match up to expectations just a little bit better. But all you can do is describe what is in front of you and trust that the microscopic matches up better.

Break a leg and then identify all the pieces!

The title is from a good luck message a friend sent in the wee hours of the morning, wishing me well on my certification exam.

That I took this morning.

That I passed!!!

Months of worry, months of study, and I passed.

I will have free time again. I don't have to feel vaguely guilty that there's some studying I need to be doing.

I passed the certification exam of a terminal degree, that might officially be the last major test I'll have to take in my entire life.

This is not a well written blog entry, I understand, but... it gets the point across! I'm done! I passed!

Hooray!