April 23, 2010
I loved job shadowing. It was very cool because I was right up in the action. I job shadowed with the Godfather of APA’s, Joe . He’s the coolest guy. When I first went to job shadow, I dressed professionally, I brought a note pad and pen and had a lot of pre-written questions to ask. I figured this was standard procedure to have all these things. Apparently not, but it was impressionable. All three APA’s that worked there remembered me with the notepad and questions, while one histotech (and future classmate) remembered me as the girl who almost biffed it walking down the freshly waxed hallway with my cute dressy shoes. First impressions: check.
Diverticulitis
I saw the coolest stuff that day and I didn’t faint which was really good. I saw diverticulitis of the sigmoid colon-and yes, I had to google what diverticulitis was, I saw a knee cap which made me feel like there wasn’t quite enough oxygen in the room (bones makes me queasy)
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April 20, 2010
Let’s start with what APA stands for: Anatomic Pathologists’ Assistant. OK, what’s that? It is an assistant to a pathologist in a hospital or a medical examiner. They do the diagnosing of cancer/tumors/cause of death-you name it. I will be assisting them. Basically I’ll be doing the dirty work/fun stuff so they can have all the glory. Obviously it’s a lot more than just that, but this is my blog, not a professional journal. I’ll be taking whatever tissue (breast, tumor, mole, intestine) gets removed from a person in surgery and dictating what I see, taking measurements, staining, dissecting and so forth. I found out about this program while searching for forensic psychology, oddly enough. I have a bachelor’s of science in psychology-which is a useless degree unless you actually want to be a PhD. I live in the Detroit area, so when I saw that one of the 8 APA programs in the country was at Wayne State University, I was elated.
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