White Coat Ceremony

We have received our white coats, finished finals, and the current second years graduate today (BIG CONGRATS) therefore I am officially a second year Pathologists' Assistant student.  It is such a relief to have finished a whole year of graduate school, especially that last semester! My classmates and I have worked so hard this past year and have really come together as a team; I am so proud of them all.  Just a 2 week break until clinicals start; I'll be heading to Disney for Christmas, but don't worry I'll have a 12 hour car ride to study up on my copy of Lester.

PA Class of 2014 and our professors

Future Pittsburgh roommates

Clinical Rotations

We have finally received our clinical rotation schedule for next year so without further ado here is where I’ll be:

• January 6 – February 7: St. Clair Hospital (Pittsburgh, PA)

• February 10 – February 14: University of Pittsburgh HSC Tissue Bank (Pittsburgh, PA)

• February 17 – March 28: West Virginia University Healthcare Autopsy (Morgantown, WV)

• March 31 – April 18:  St. Francis Hospital (Charleston, WV)

• April 21 – May 9: UPMC Children’s Hospital (Pittsburgh, PA)

• May 12 – June 20: Butler Hospital (Butler, PA)

• June 23 – August 1: Thomas Memorial Hospital (Charleston, WV)

• August 4 – September 12: Conemaugh Hospital (Johnstown, PA)

• September 15 – October 24: UPMC Presbyterian (Pittsburgh, PA)

• October 27 – December 19: PathMD Labs (Los Angeles, CA) 

I am absolutely ECSTATIC that I was given the opportunity to go to LA. I cannot wait to get through these last couple of exams and start putting to use all the information I’ve been learning the past year.

Our program also has a few clinical sites that I do not rotate through:

• UPMC Shadyside (Pittsburgh, PA)
• Allegheny General Hospital (Pittsburgh, PA)
• Ruby Memorial Hospital Surgical (Morgantown, WV)

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I'm very thankful that the university gives us the whole week off for Thanksgiving break. It has been nice to relax a little, but I've also been taking this time to get caught up on school work (yay for papers and study guides).  The week we come back from break will be extremely hectic, but we finally get to find out our clinical rotation schedule! I can't wait to start the clinical year and put all this knowledge to use.

On another note - one of my classmates got married this past weekend and our class had a great time celebrating with her and her husband.  I don't know how she managed to plan a wedding during the craziness of grad school, but it was beautiful!

PA Program with the bride - Congrats Amanda!

Almost There

So I have been terrible at blogging this semester (I apologize).  I could give you a million excuses as to why, but in all honesty this semester is just HARD.   For me it has by far been the hardest of them all.  Having 7 classes definitely keeps you busy at all times, but at least that means that the days are passing by at an alarming rate (only 57 days until we start clinical rotations)!  I cannot wait to start rotations, but we still have 6 exams, 3 quizzes, 1 essay, and 4 finals to get through first! 

And next Saturday is our frozen section lab test!  The goal of this test is to prepare good slides in under 7 minutes; this includes everything from cutting a piece of tissue from the specimen, freezing the tissue, cutting beautiful sections on the cryostat, staining with H&E, and coverslipping the slides.  I can remember back to the first frozen section lab and how horrible I was at the whole process.  I was completely awkward using my left hand (non-dominant hand) to pull the frozen tissue off the block and all of my slides would have wrinkles or tears.  But I’ve been spending a lot of time in the gross room practicing on hotdogs and am feeling much more confident now.

 

Practicing frozens on hotdog specimens

Happy Halloween

My class is dressed as the Despicable Me cast today (Minions, Vector, and the fluffy unicorn)! This is how we keep our sanity in a week of exams!

PA Students and the Community

Some of my classmates have been doing great things for the community (and even in other countries) lately. I thought I’d share these articles about them:

http://wvuhealthcare.com/wvuh/Content/Media/News-Releases/2013/OCT/WVU-pathologists-assistant-students-present-at-Pre

http://wvuhealthcare.com/wvuh/Content/Media/News-Releases/2013/SEPT/WVU-pathology-student-trains-laboratory-staff-in-B

Gross Specimen Conferences

On Friday we had our monthly gross specimen conference.   For these conferences the PAs bring  specimens that they’ve had over the month and the Pathology Residents have to try and diagnose what they see based on the gross morphologic findings.   This month’s topic was bone and soft tissue tumors.  One of the specimens was a very large leiomyosarcoma (about the size of a softball).  In case you are curious, a leiomyosarcoma is a malignant tumor of smooth muscle cells, which occurs most often in the uterus and retroperitoneal soft tissue.

A Leiomyosarcoma courtesy of Google

These gross specimen conferences and my gross room rotations always make me curious of how masses can become so large before causing significant problems (or perhaps people are just ignoring the symptoms).  I would love to have the opportunity to observe a surgery for a specimen that would end up at my grossing station.  It would be great to see the whole processes and have a better perspective of how a mass might look in the body with respect to organs and other structures. 

Hardest Week Yet

I have survived the hardest week of grad school so far.  Last week we had four exams (microbiology, microanatomy, lab management, and physiology). My nap on Friday evening never felt so amazing!

I’ve compiled a list of things that will most likely happen while you are in grad school (that may or may not also be a recap of my week):

• You will study more than you ever thought was possible
• You will consume more coffee than you thought was possible
• Your laundry will not get done
• Your dishes will remain dirty
• You won’t have time to log on to your social media accounts
• Your birthday will happen during one of the busiest weeks (Happy 23rd Birthday to me!)
• You will also probably get sick during one of the busiest weeks (while simultaneously taking an exam about the immune system)
• You will probably have a few mental breakdowns (it’s ok)
• You WILL conquer every exam!

One more thing: you and your classmates will try anything to make studying more interesting

Can you see Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in this section of gallbladder?