The Daily Life of Pathology Training #2
WARNING: GROSS PICTURES. If you don't like seeing real human organs, don't bother scrolling down.
We divide our duties for the month into two teams A and B. Two weeks on duty and two weeks off just to have some precaution if one person gets covid the rest won't get caught up in quarantine. Looks good on paper until one realizes they have to come back to work on their days off chasing some slides to review and reports to file.
See, when one finally cuts a specimen into small samples, it doesn't magically gets processed by the next day and arrives at your table. Depending on the type of specimen (size and nature of the case) some specimens may take a while to process into slides for review. Adding to the delay is how much you have to study before coming up with a diagnosis and negotiating your consultant's schedule as they got other hospitals to visit and lives to live.
Things are said to be much different than they were since the pandemic started. Back then, the cases weren't piling up as much as they are doing now. Probably due to people getting used to it and some protocols have been made to work around some parts. I'd say I'm getting the middle range of what the number of cases to be expected. On normal days, I would expect the case number to reach around 4k by these months, now it just reached 1k, last year had less.
Still in a phase where I'm trying to get used to the life and coping well until the stars align and somehow complicated cases get shoved on my table to dissect. I do love the challenge but damn rummaging through the list of specimens and actually cutting them all up drained me enough to contemplate what the hell am I doing with my life.
Front and Back view of a breast that had a slow growing mass for over 3 years from a patient that refused to had it checked until it got worse
You'd think people would have been wiser to know something is already wrong and they need to have it checked. But then I live in a third world country where health care can be expensive even when government subsidy applies.
Fast forward when the receptionist just finds me on the floor of the Histopathology Lab staring at the ceiling blankly wondering what I should be doing next then lost in thought. I just finished cutting up a rectosigmoid colon suspected of cancer and now exhausted thinking the other large specimens I have to cut.
The receptionist just looks at me curious and I stared at them blank. They moved away without saying a word and I just went on staring at the ceiling. They probably understood. I'm not the first resident that had those episodes. But I'm sure I was their first sight to be on the floor doing just that.
Sometimes I'm just hoping I'd get an interesting case enough to complete my requirements to proceed to the next level. Then again I'll be a jerk if I wished someone had to be that interesting case considering interesting in our field means the patient is screwed with a complicated case.
I still love the profession and somehow find the job suits my lack of interest in socializing personally. In pathology, it's all skill in narrowing down the most suitable diagnosis that fits the puzzle and I like the challenge.
Posted with STEMGeeks
These are some very diseased-looking organs.
The testicle is new. The breast thing is probably a question of benign vs malignant. As bad as it looks, the histologic section may just reveal it to be a benign case unless I get to see a lot of mitotic activity. Hoping it's just a simple Phyllodes Tumor.
Oh? Why did they take the whole testicle when it's new?
The new part is it being my first case handling a testicle specimen. The patient had chronic orchitis for 6 months and it took this long for them to decide they needed to have their ball cut off.
Yikes, that's unfortunate.