Pathology 101

It's no secret that I work at University of Michigan Hospital. Today I figured I would show you exactly what I do there.

I work in the Pathology Department. I mainly work with these:

Glass microscope slides and blocks.  

These are what a pathologist looks at under the microscope to diagnose cancer and other diseases. See how they sometimes mark them?

A big part of my job is to send  these pathology slides out for patients who have been diagnosed with cancer or some other disease and want to get a second opinion or treatment elsewhere.


Let's say a newly diagnosed patient wants to have a second opinion. They make an appointment at the another hospital. That hospital's  pathology department contacts us to have us send them the slides that the pathologist here used to make the diagnosis so that their pathologist can look at them too. I call this a case.

The first thing I do is print out all of the patients biopsy reports and send a request to the slide library for the slides. I can receive as little as one slide or as many as 60 per biopsy, depending on what part of the body. Some patients have had multiple biopsies. Sometimes they want slides from several years ago.

After I receive the slides I have to submit them all to the Surgical Pathology Officer (SPO). That is a pathologist who is assigned to review each case and make sure that the proper slides are being sent out. We use different colored cover sheets for this. Currently they are pink. We have about 6 SPO's and every week is a different one.

Once I receive the slides back from the SPO  I put them in slide holders. These particular cases hold 5 slides each. 

Then I get on the FedEx website,create a label pack them up and send them off!

We send slides all over the US and sometimes to Canada and I've even sent them to China!

After a while we get our slides back and a report from the hospital.

Then we scan that report into the patients record and into our pathology database. WE also make sure our pathologist gets a copy of the report.

At any given time I can have from 5 to 20 cases in various stages of completion going at one time.

Sounds simple enough, right?

In the next post I'll tell you all of the things that can (and do!) go wrong!

Until then....

 

More Christmas

On Christmas Day we went to Chris and Marissa's. They had all of Marissa's family there.

They have a Charlie Brown tree!

They have a real tree, too.  I didn't take many pictures though. I think because I don't know her family that well and I was embarrassed to be taking them!

I had to work on Thursday and Friday and on Saturday we had Chris and Marissa, Shauna and Brad over for a post Christmas brunch and to exchange gifts.

I didn't wrap a single gift! I had so many bags from past Christmas's that I just wanted to use them all up!
Toby was wondering if one of them was for him!

One thing I did want to show you is the windows at work.

Every year they do this Holiday Grief Wall where they supply markers and people write tributes to loved ones that they lost or that are sick. I like how someone wrote a thank you right next to the sign.

Its the windows of a whole corridor and it's really something to see when they all get filled up!

Here's a few pictures I took early one morning when it was still dark out!

I always enjoy seeing this every year! 

That was pretty much our Christmas! Always have a great time and always glad when it's over!

Now we just have to survive this brutal winter we are having so far! 

Until the next time!

Small Holiday Review

Christmas really snuck up on me this year. I just never seemed to get into the holiday spirit. I decorated but minimally because we weren't having anyone over this year, except the kids. I had every intention of having Brads parents sometime, but that never did happen.

Anyway, it was nice though. Christmas Eve we went to my brother Jim's and his wife Helen's house. We did the usual Christmas exchange where you buy a $25 gift for a female or male, then we pick numbers and when your number is called, you can either steal someone else's gift or pick another one. I picked a huge basket with all sorts Ghiardelli chocolates in it. Unfortunately it was stolen from me by my niece so I had to pick another one. This is what I ended up with.

Two hand painted Christmas glasses. They are very cute and I was happy! Probably better for me than all that chocolate anyway,  unless I keep filling them with booze!

Someone got a inflatable beard and Dominic was kind enough to demonstrate it for us!

He's beyond cute and such a talkative, friendly little guy!

This is me and my sister in law Debbie!

Goofy nephews Joe and Jeff!

Snuck a picture of my handsome son-in-law to be when he wasn't looking!


More Christmas coming up..

Until then...

December re-cap!

December sure seemed to fly by!

My coworker Diane finally retired after 19 years of working at U of M. Her last day was December  20th. We worked together for 10 years so I wanted to give her something special for a retirement gift. I know she loves to read and will have lots of time for reading now so bought a few books, bookmarks, a book light and some chocolates. Went to the Salvation Army and got  a really cute red basket with bells on it and a Christmas decoration at the dollar store and put it all together.

This was the end result. Yeah, that's Marlo Thomas looking back at you! Her book is called Growing Up Laughing and it looked pretty good! Anyway, she really liked it and kept it on her desk so everyone could see it when they walked by.

On a side note, I really enjoyed making that basket and from now on, anyone who gets a gift from me is going to get some kind of a basket!

She didn't really want a party but they did have a little get together so people could come stop in and say bye to her. They just served coffee and desserts. Cookies, brownies, various pastries and fruit!

Here we are in our messy, crazy office! I hope she has a long, happy, health retirement!

Now I have a new co-worker who has lots to learn yet! The last few weeks at work have been pretty exhausting!

Today is Rich's birthday. We probably won't do anything special but I do have to get to the grocery store to get the ingredients for his favorite dinner. And we are supposed to be getting 6-12 inches of snow starting tonight. Gah! Sick of winter already and it's only January 4th. It's going to be a long year!

Anyway, more December recap coming.

Until then.....