Today marks the beginning of my fourth week here at UPMC Shadyside and it has been an eventful rotation so far. Since this is a "Center of Excellence" as I noted in my last post, my last couple of weeks have been filled with bladders, kidneys, prostates, and lower extremity amputations. In addition to these daily specimens, I also had the opportunity to gross a sarcoma, which was very interesting since I hadn't had the chance to do one before. It wasn't as difficult to gross as I had expected it to be after seeing the size of it, but it ended up being an interesting case. I started out the case by differentially inking the specimen like a "box," so I inked the medial, lateral, superior, inferior and deep margins. The anterior surface would normally be inked as well, but in this case, the anterior aspect was covered entirely by skin. Then, I described the lesion on the epidermis and it's relationship to all the margins. Finally, I serially sectioned the specimen and submitted my sections, which included submitting the medial and lateral margins completely, the lesion to all margins, and sections of just the lesion.
Another case I received was a lymph node search for a melanoma case. I have a love/hate relationship when it comes to doing lymph node searches, just because sometimes you find them and sometimes you don't. I could have a giant container full of fibroadipose tissue (fat) to search through and may only find one lymph node. Luckily, in this case, I found over 20 and it made if feel more worthwhile and successful (in my eyes that is), than only finding one or two.
Other than rotations, I've just been keeping up on my readings and preparing for a presentation I have to give at the UPMC Regional Conference. I will be presenting with my classmate, Sierra Sheppard, on rectal cancer specimens and different grossing techniques. We are a little nervous, but I think it will be very worthwhile to do it!
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