'I am...Corason.'

Just spoofing of Beyonce's album title. Thing is, while I was at Work Expereience (hereby referred to as w/e), so many times after being introduced, people kept saying, "oh, you're Cora's son aren't you?", and so on. But then, because half of them had accents or spoke fast, it sounded like 'corason', so...yeah. Just inspired me to do the title.

To surmise, w/e was one of the best experiences I've had. Sorry guys, but it was a tonne and a half better than attending the last week of school. Before I lose any more memory, I'd just like to mention all the people (staff) who made me feel so welcome at w/e (which was at Livo Hosp in the Anatomical Laboratories). Big big thanks to Paul, Alana, Hoda, Jason, Lan, Sam, Samantha, Moses, Jasmina, Fanar, Michael, Ana, Anne, Anna, Manasi, Dr. Kassim and Chau, Sandra, Tash, Virgini, Nasan, Bruce, Mehira, Shelandra, Huong and Alex. Might've forgotten someone, so sorry to them if I did. Also a huge thanks to Shantay, the senior adviser for the labs, for letting me have the w/e there at the labs.

Okay, I'm not gonna have a total 5 day run down, but I will type up the things that I got to...*ahem* observe. The most I got to do in the way of work was probably the more menial tasks like signing in specimens onto the computer database, setting up specimen blocks and so on. The process in the labs are as follows. Anatomical Pathology deals with diagnosing tissues and such when they are sent to the labs so that the doctors and patients upstairs can get a result (I say upstairs because the labs are in the basement level so there's nowhere to go but up). Anyway, tissue specimens are sent in jars ranging in size depending on the specimen. They could be tiny lymph nodes or whole sections of bowels and intestines. It all depends on the patient's case.

Anyway, when the specimens arrive, they go to reception (which is just a desk with computers on it, nothing pretty looking) and are given a number to be ID-ed while in the labs. They then are taken to the cut-up rooms, where the registrars (in-training pathologists) literally cut up the specimens and examine them. Small specimens are usually all placed in one block (a little tray with holes at the bottom. They need to be printed with the patient's name and number), but slightl larger ones like appendixes and galls bladders need to be cut up into several pieces and sometimes several blocks. Just to note, these blocks are what will eventually stain the slides. I will explain later. Larger specimens like bowels and ovaries, would be cut up into smaller sections of importance (eg. tumour, surface lesions, etc.) and placed on many slides. Oh, just to say, while someone is doing something in the labs, they must wear a lab coat and surgical gloves.

The specimens are then left in a machine where they are dehydrated overnight by total exposure to xylene and pure alcohols. The next day, specimens are then placed in a square metal container where they are filled with hot wax and then set on a cold plate. Once set, the blocks are sent to microtomy and are slowly cut (like peeling). It's hard to explain. The machine operated slowly cuts the slide at 3microns ~ .5 microns depending on the specimen and those parts cut off are then left to float on water for a moment or two.

The specimens are cut so that the whole face of the specimen is showing, where, if there are three pieces of tissue but two pieces are hidden in the wax, they are cut down until all three pieces are showing, which is the whole face. The whole wax block isn't cut away, so after the required amount of slide slivers are floated and put on slides, they are filed away according to their number in case doctors want more cuts. The skimmed parts that are floated on water are then picked up onto slides and are 'baked' in a hot environ and then dehydrated through xylene and alcohol and stained. Once the process is complete, they are mechanically covered with a cover slip and filed away as stained slides. Certain slides that are special that come from the liver, bone marrow or a biopsy (I forget which organ) are sent to special stains where they are dehydrated, stained according to what they are and then hydrated again.

I got to watch all of that get done and it was quite interesting. Manasi let me do a special stain on one of the slides as well! It wasn't a patient slide, though, but a control slide. Still, it was fun to do and look under the microscope what they looked like. I spent the bulk of my time, however, in the cut-up areas where I got to see a lot of things I don't think I'll see again any time soon.

I was with Jasmina when I went electron microscopy. Watching her do the microtomy for EM looked really hard. While it had the same principle of the larger microtomy machines, you had to have steady hands to cut the blocks properly because the specimen had to be cut just so or else the entire face would be missed. Looking at the EM was the fun part. The instruments of the EM were very sensitive, Jasmina had told me that where the specimen was being placed, you had to use tweezers because placing it in with your hands would mess up the vision of the EM because of the oils on our hands. The EM also operated on a vacuum in the viewing area, so before viewing, the EM rejected all the air inside. The view of the EM was black and white, but it was really interesting to see the individual cells and even the mitchondria and nuclei.

On Thursday, I went into my mother's department, the typing area, where they do all the mailing, filing and keeping up to date on what slides are being borrowed from other hospitals and such. My mum's main job is to type the reports that the registrars dictate while performing cut-up. While the registrar is cutting up, they use a foot pedal that turns a microphone on/off and describe what the specimen is like, as well as identifying the patient and their number. After trying some dictation typing, I've had to give my mum a LOT more credit to what she does as some of the registrars have very strong accents and are hard to understans, even more so when they are not facing the mic (I've seen them dictate facing away from the mic a few times in cut-up).

On my last day I spent the morning in Cytology. They are similar to Histo, except that they deal with fluids rather than tissues, and so alot of their work is done under the microscope and therefore do not have cut-up or microtomy. Shelandra, the head of Cyto, gave me a brief introduction on Cytology and Fanar showed me the reception in Cyto. I have to say, it's alot slower than the one in Histo. Another cytologist, Alex, showed me a couple Cyto-slides on the conference microscopes and even took me to see him do what he does in action. The two of us went up to where a doctor was extracting some fluids from a patient and, when handed the syringe, Alex would spray out the contents onto a slide, dehydrate, stain and cover slip the specimen and then have a quick look under a microscope to see if the slide was satisfactory.

I also looked at some cases with one of the registrars, Michael. Some of them were skin lesions, ulcers, lymph node extracts and the like. The first couple were real patient slides and lucky for me, I got to look at them on the conference microscopes. The rest were just 'practice slides', where Michael had to figure out what the case of the slide was, which, after almost an hour of analysis on all of the slides, was very hard, considering all of the detailing that he had to pick up on to infer what he did.

It was a good experience. If you haven't done w/e yet, you really should do it. It teaches you how different work is from school and how, no matter how much we study in school, it will never completely prepare us for the real world of work.