-----
> OK I can beat you all.  Long long ago in a hospital very far away a GP
> cytologist was going to issue a cervical cytology report about  a parasite
> infestation.  This was based on a "mite"  seen on the smear.
>
> My boss thought that this was unlikely and insisted we investigated
further.
> In the end an insect specialist showed that it was a small beetle that had
> crawled on to the wet smear and died.
>
> Andy Shand
>
> GP cytologist = Any medic off the streets was considered competent, with
> minimal training to report gynae cytology
> Long Long Ago = 29 years
> Very Far Away = I think I'll keep that one to myself
> My Boss = Chief Medical Laboratory Technologist (I think the titles
correct
> and he didn't have a degree but he was professional)
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: 
> To: 
> Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 4:22 PM
> Subject: RE: Other jumping organisms
>
>
> > Following on from the jumping Tubercle bacilli, I would like to share
with
> you the situation I find when doing a locum some 15 years ago in Papworth
> hospital, Cambs, England.
> > Papworth is one of 2 highly prestigious heart/lung transplant hospitals
in
> UK.
> > It's a funny place, with proper buildings, some quite old, and modern
> extensions which are Portacabins.
> > (In case portacabin is not a universal term, these are prefab wood/board
> buildings, transported from site to site and standing on metal feet. They
> can have plumbing and lighting and be quite comfortable.)
> > The path work there is exclusively heart and lung, mostly being biopsies
> for rejection or opportunistic infection.
> > Imagine my surprise when I found every slide to be teeming with fungi.
> Small, big, short, long, fat, thin etc.
> > "Oh", I was told, "they drop from the hay insulation in the ceiling."
> > The pathologists lived with this quite happily, which is more than can
be
> said for me.
> > Plane of section is an OK test when there's one or two, but this was
> ridiculous.
> >
> > OK, say they didn't jump either:-)
> >
> > BTW, after Bob Richmond's posting re. auramine-rhodanine for TB, which I
> used to do at another hospital years ago, I got the lasses here to do a
> couple for recent cases. The results were quite spectacular, like the
desert
> sky at night!!!!
> >
> > Terry L Marshall B.A.(Law), M.B.Ch.B., F.R.C.Path
> > Consultant Histopathologist
> > Rotherham General Hospital, Yorkshire
> > terry.marshall@rgh-tr.trent.nhs.uk
> >
>