Frustrating Day - Day 9

Today was a tough day. Yesterday after the opening, we had given the doctors at MKH a list of all the reagents that we needed more of. The quantities we got at the Bazaar Tuesday are not enough for the processor. They said no problem, we will have it tomorrow. Well, tomorrow is here and the reagents are not. We might get things tomorrow if we are lucky, but I won't hold my breath. So, no processing or embedding going to happen today!

Also the internet was down at the hospital, and the microscope wasn't working for a while. We spent a lot of time tinkering with the router, computer and plugs trying to make things work. Finally we got the microscope up and running. The internet was down at the source, so there wasn't much we could do. We had been making fairly good progress the last few days, so it was very frustrating to have a day where we couldn't get much of anything done.

After the opening, surgeons started sending us specimens. We had requested that if they wanted a frozen section the tissue should be kept fresh in the fridge. This morning we got a specimen from a surgeon's 6 year old son. It was a lymph node in formalin, whih was frozen in the freezer. We also got a breast biopsy in formalin. We did our best to freeze a piece of each, because it was the only available option, but the cryostat was not cooperating today. It took a few hours to get down to -13 and we tried to cut th tissue but it was way too soft. Even thick sections didn't work. The slides came out crappy, as did the stain with old Hematoxylin. Eventually it got down to -16 so we tried again. Not much luck. It was getting dark, and the room we are in doesn't have sufficient lighting. We turned off the machine and gave up for the day.

I spent most of the night working on my presentation for tomorrow. I am keeping it pretty basic with lots of pictures. I have found a lot of useful cardiac pictures thanks to google, since I was not prepared at all for this! When I was done, I watched a few minutes of Bollywood movies before bed. Great dancing, not so great acting!

We have satellite TV in the guesthouse, so we get mostly channels from India, ESPN, CNN, BCC and a few other channels. One night we were watching the Simpsons, so Fox must be in there somewhere. There are lots of movies too, most purchased from the military base.