The past few days have been rather busy. Tuesday, I took the day off work, but spent 10 hours at the hospital shadowing with Nicole. We started out editing her dictation from the day before, and then looked at slides from 7-10. She was going through them and explaining what we were looking at. At one point she told me "you should really be a pathologist. you did really well on Friday, and you already know everything I'm telling you now." Around 10, her attending, Dr. Loy came in and we started looking at slides with him. It was pretty amazing. He was scrolling through each slide in a few seconds at low power, and could tell whether or not they were normal. He was nice though, and slowed down to explain things to me. We finished with him just before noon. The lunch conference was about frozen sections. Each resident drew a playing card, and if he called their number, they had to go up to the scope. They looked at a slide from a recent case (that was also projected for the rest of the residents to see) and make a diagnosis. It was pretty intense. If the resident was wrong, Dr. Loy told them where to go back and look in the slide, or gave them the permanent slide to get more information.
After lunch we went back up to the lab to gross specimen. It was derm day, so there were several skin biopsies. Nicole let me do several of the by myself. There weren't as many large samples as there were on Friday because the OR schedule was light. However, Nicole had some bones in acid to decalcify, including a tumorous mandible and a femoral head. Becca was still working with the colon that she had gotten in on Thursday. She also got part of a foot. Three toes were attached to the end of the foot still, and several of the metatarsals were included in the container. Becca also got a gallbladder with cholesterolosis and one large shiny gallstone. Nicole and I took a sliver of the gallbladder up to the frozen prep room so that she could show me how they make frozen sections for patients that are in surgery. I was not very good at it. The blade cuts the section super thin, and you have to pull on the section with constant pressure in order for it to not curl back on itself, but you can't use too much pressure or the section will tear. I did manage to make a few slides, but they were less than ideal. Clearly it is a skill that requires practice. Nicole also told me about med school, and how much she disliked the clinical years since she had already decided to be a pathologist, and to make sure to take personal time during school.
Wednesday, I was supposed to leave for my parent's house right after class, but boyfriend's battery was dead and I had to give him a jump. Unfortunately, he didn't realize the jump didn't last until I was already on the highway. Wednesday night was good though, because I was able to hang out with one of my best friends from high school, who I rarely get to see.
This morning I had an internship interview. It wasn't so much an interview as an introduction. They kept saying "when you're here this summer." I'm not sure I actually want the position or not. It sounds like a great learning opportunity, but it's unpaid and about three hours from home. It's only about 20 minutes from my parent's house, which is fine, except that I would have to drive back and forth for work on the weekends, and gas is already crazy expensive. Not to mention that it's unpaid, and I'm already losing about 800 a month by not working my normal job during the week. Plus, I think that spending three months at my parent's house would drive me crazy. I suppose I have a week or so to think it over. I know several of my friends would be excited that I'd be back at my parent's house and closer to them, but boyfriend would be sad to have me gone all summer.
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