Tuesday (man this week is going slow)

Jill was able to send a picture from Peru on a friend’s computer. I think this is our newest compassion kid!:









Here is your tip for Today: Turn off your TV. There is nothing on anyway and TV is a dieing media outlet (in 5 years TV will be where 8-track cassettes are. Unfortunately it will be replaced by even worse online media.) If you like vampires, unrealistic medical shows, American Idol or Dancing with the Stars, I cant be your friend.




Random picture time (including one of people making cheese):




Work
Ever wonder what I do for a living (no, you say?) You don’t care do you? Well, I’ll tell you anyway. Here is what I do in a typical week:

-I review and sign out 40-100 drug test reports per day. Physicians are constantly misinterpreting drug screens and asking me questions about poppy seeds, heroin, etc. How many times do I have to answer the question “does second-hand smoke cause a positive marijuana drug test?” or “why does oxymorphone show up in the urine of someone taking Vicodin?”

-A hyperthyroid patient had a low free T4 level with a low TSH level. This doesn’t make much clinical sense for her diagnosis. I had to figure that one out; she had antibodies against a protein in our assay.

-I have to review testing for monoclonal antibodies (think multiple myeloma) patients. We find at least 5 cases per day.

- I currently have 2 pathology residents that I have to train. They know anatomic pathology well but don’t know any clinical pathology, it gets old. Med students/residents are sometimes smart (30% of the time) for some, I wonder how they can even tie their shoes.

-A 50 year old morbidly obese man died. Cocaine metabolites were found in the vitreous humor of his eyes (yeah, we can test ocular ‘juice’). They wanted me to figure out how long ago he took the cocaine. This is like trying to figure out when Mt St. Helens will erupt next.

-We had a $350,000 LC-tandem mass spectrometer stop working. I had to get it up and running with the help of an engineer.

-We run a lot of hemoglobin analyses here. Every week I have to interpret the tests. This is probably the most complicated part of my job since there is a lot of genetics involved. It’s always hard to see cases of sickle cell, beta thalassemia major, etc. in babies. We see 5-10 cases per week.

-Vitamin-D, vitamin-D, vitamin-D. We measure it way too much and it’s rarely clinically indicated to measure. I spend way too much time working on and consulting about vitamin-D.

-I had to design a new test algorithm for Celiac disease (gluten intolerance).

-I have to choose a new vendor for our hepatitis A,B,C and HIV immunoassay.

-Wow, blogging really is self-centered. Im going to stop.



Obscure jill wierd hair picture of the day:


What is this hairstyle? Looks like she went to Wanesha's house of style and asked for the red-highlight, white-girl afro special. And that dress?? It looks like camouflage for a Polish funeral home I once went to.