At the lab, we see a colorful array of species and their endlessly variable disease presentations. There is a seasonality to some of our cases--more kittens in the spring, more cows in the fall, more cow abortions in March through May. But that doesn't mean we don't see kittens in winter, cows in summer, and abortions any time of the year.
Backyard poultry cases always liven up the necropsy floor. They usually have interesting parasites, internal and external. And when it's an older laying hen, it almost always has cancer. Invariably, those older hens come wrapped in scented trash bags. I am not sure exactly why so many backyard bird owners submit their birds wrapped in scented trash bags. Maybe there's an instruction manual that I haven't come across yet.
My colleague and I divide the week's necropsy cases up between us, mainly so I can get admin work done and be free for meetings and such. And even though I have my days on the floor, and X has his days, we often end up working necropsy cases at the same time. While it can get kind of chaotic for the tech who has to bounce back and forth between us, it's a great opportunity for us to learn from each other. We look over each other's shoulder, poking and prodding and asking questions, and we argue about differentials and diagnostics.In fact, we argue about these things all the time, but when we have the animal remains in front of us, there is an extra dimension to the discussions. To be clear, I don't use "argue" with a combative connotation. It may get heated but it's always professional.
My colleague X and I have radically different styles when doing necropsies, and although we usually arrive at the same list of differentials for any given case, we get there by separate routes. That doesn't mean our conclusions are not sound or supported by gross findings, but it does highlight how many different ways that diseases can present themselves.
Performing a necropsy requires a systematic approach to ensure that you don't miss anything, and my colleague and I use the same basic approach for all cases. But there are stylistic differences. For the gross pathology component, I tend to lay all tissues out and examine them as a group while he examines each tissue and organ as he goes, but the end result is the same. Swabs get taken and sometimes fresh tissues are set aside for other tests. For the histopathology part, selected tissue samples are placed in formalin. We use formalin as a fixative to firm up tissues so we can cut very thin slices and put them onto microscope slides.
The biggest difference in our styles is how we select tissues for histopathology. I have a very parsimonious style, so, for example, if the spleen is normal, I'll place a small piece of it in the formalin jar and discard the rest. My colleague thinks big. Very big. It's not unusual for him to place entire cat heads (he was interested in one of the eyes) and the complete bodies and all viscera from small chickens in the formalin jar. This has become a bit of a running joke back in the histo lab because when my cases are laid out for trimming, there is a neat little pile of tissues, easy to sort and select. When his cases are laid out for trimming, there are enormous, macabre mounds of organs and appendages.
Yesterday, I picked up a backyard bird case from him in order to even out our case load for this week. But I didn't tell the technician that I was taking the bird. She thought my colleague was doing all three cases that afternoon, and she set out equipment at each station with him in mind.
The chick was about 4 weeks old, not even as long as my palm. But the technician had a three-liter formalin jar all ready to go. Three liters, nearly a gallon of formalin, for tissues from an animal that didn't even weigh 50 g. As I tossed my tiny little pile of tissue samples into this massive jar, I glanced over at my colleague who was working nearby on a cat and I loudly said to the technician, "Well, it's obvious that you expected X to be doing this necropsy instead of me!" He looked up, blinked a couple of times over his mask, and all three of us cracked up.
I am grateful that I work with a colleague like X who can take a bit of good-natured teasing and not alter his style one tiny bit.
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