Boring old life

Well, apart from my recent hair adventures, life back in the states has pretty much returned to normal. I'm hoping that my itching, scabby, chemically burned scalp will soon return to normal too. I am back on autopsy service, which has been a nice quiet re-introduction to the world of american pathology. We have only had one case in the past two weeks, which has allowed me to focus on the autopsy presentation that I gave this morning. There is a weekly autopsy conference where the interesting cases are shared with a group of devoted pathology fans, and this week it was my turn to entertain everybody for an hour.

Preparing one of these things is kind of a lot of work, as you have to go through the patient's chart (which sometimes can be six inches thick), dig up their old slides, dig up obscure papers, make a powerpoint, take pictures of the organs, take pictures of the microscopic slides, incorporate those pictures into the powerpoint, and generally just figure out what you want to say. And putting a microscopic slide up on the big screen and then describing it accurately, articulately, and in front of a room full of professional pathologists is kind of a daunting task. That's when you pull out the big fancy words.

Note the marked hypercellularity of the alveolar septae, with increased thickness due to proliferation of primitive mesenchymal cells. Also note the type 2 pneumocyte hyperplasia and the presence of macrophages in the intra-alveolar space. Sounds pretty fancy, eh?

Fortunately there were no radiologists in the house, because I found myself attempting to interpret chest x-rays by saying things like "this looks pretty bad" and "there are these patchy infiltrate... thingies... everywhere." Good one. Thingies? Did that actually come out of my mouth at an academic conference? Yes. It did.

But all in all it went pretty well. I was presenting a case of this very rare and almost universally fatal interstitial lung disease that has only been described in 21 people worldwide. I might try to write up a case report for publication, in an attempt to fill that strikingly blank void in my future CV titled PUBLICATIONS. There is this little known desperation among medical students to get their name attached to a published paper. It looks really good if you have something, and in competitive residencies (like dermatology, for example) it is a necessity. They won't even consider your application unless you have been published. Some people go out of their way to do really complicated and time-consuming research to get there names listed first in a paper as the principal investigator. Some people, like me, make absolutely no effort and just kind of hope something falls in their lap. Maybe something just did.

Oh crap! Brain cutting starts in 5 minutes!