Number 8

I am thankful for my job.  I work at KDL Pathology as a Pathologist Assistant.  This means I do the gross dissection of tissue specimens.  Lots of people think my job is disgusting.  But I really like it.  And it's interesting.  Erin does the same thing, so over dinner, we often talk about a cool specimen we cut that day.  And tons of people have skinned a buck or cleaned a fish, but how many have gutted a human or cut open a gallbladder? 

I have always wanted to work in the medical field.  I love the "blood and guts" stuff.  But I was always apprehensive about working around patients.  I get attached too easily.  In college, while working at an outpatient imaging center, I would put patients in the MRI or CT then get them out after their scan.  Sometimes during their test, on the screen you could see that it was really a big fat tumor that was causing their problem and it really bothered me that I knew before they did.  It was hard walking them back to the dressing room and lying, saying I didn't know, when they asked if everything looked okay- because not being a radiologist, it was illegal to tell them anything regarding results (plus that was not something I was qualified to do in the first place).  I would then go home and think about that patient for days.  Especially since you never know how they turned out.

This is one reason that Pathology is a fitting field for me.  I get specimens from literally tens of thousands of patients every year.  But the only time I see a patient's face is if there is a picture attached to the requisition form.  You know how they say lots of people would turn vegetarian if they saw how their meat actually made it from the cow to their table?  Well, this is similar.  There's no emotional attachment I take home at night but I still get to make a difference in people's lives while doing what I love.

Right now there are so many people who have lost jobs in our struggling economy.  I truly feel blessed to not only have a job at all, but one that I honestly enjoy.  Part of that is because of who I work with and work for.  It's a lot easier to like your job if you like your coworkers.  I'm thankful to be a part of the KDL family.  Maybe that sounds lame, but it's seriously true.

Halloween is a big deal at KDL.  We also had a 40's flapper and 2 more pirates.