Pathology Lab

I pushed my cart on down the hall to the Pathology lab, and key carded in. I stopped at the front desk.

“HI, I’m from Radiation Safety. Somebody called for a Brachy Seed check.”

“Oh, yeah. I think that’s Tyra. Sue! Radiation Safety is here. Who called? Tyra?”

“Yeah, down the third aisle.”

“Third aisle.”

“Got it.”

I grabbed my sodium iodide detector and a lead pig, and, leaving my cart at the front desk, walked over to aisle 3. Pathology was a big place. Each aisle had a row of 10 or so stations on each side, where a pathologist prepared samples for examination. Tyra, a beautiful young black woman, was about four stations down the aisle. “Here I am” she called. I turned on my radiation detector and approached.

“Hi,” I said “what have we got?”

She pointed to a small plastic tray with over a dozen small round orbs of varying size. She was picking them out of a prostate gland which had been removed from a patient. “There are the prostate seeds” she said.

“Um,” I hesitated, unsure of what to say. “Is there such a thing as prostate stones? Like kidney stones or gallstones? Because those don’t look like prostate seeds.” I held my detector over them anyway, and there was no response.

“Oh!” she said. “You could be right. Hey, Sue!” Tyra called over the aisles for Sue, who must have been the manager. “Can you come take a look at these?”

“Yeah, prostate seeds are metal, cylindrical, and all the same size.” I said.

“OK, well, thanks for coming down to check. I’ve never seen prostate stones before” said Tyra.

“Me neither. OK, take care. Call anytime”

And that was that. Sometimes it’s easy.