histotx.bsky.social
@histotx.bsky.social
I teach clinical and anatomic pathology lab sciences. Scientist, not a physician. I teach all the cool lab diagnosis stuff from medical TV shows that physicians wish they did. Veteran. 3rd-generation Mexican-American. I try to listen more than I speak.
That basement membrane stain is crisp. And the mesangium in the EM is classic. May I use your pictures and description (with attribution) in our medical lab science/histology classes?
October 5, 2025 at 4:00 PM
I've already come up with a protargol alternative using gelatin and expired silver nitrate. I wonder if I could modify this to make a neural stain. 🤔
It's TRUE!!

One of these days I will shoot film once again! Nice to know there's a less-toxic way to develop it, and it gives you results with a nice vintage vibe to boot!
August 10, 2025 at 4:05 AM
My histology professor in college was a pathologist named Dr. Samples.
July 29, 2025 at 12:32 PM
Freida Carson had a degree in home economics from a women's college in Texas. The skills she learned allowed her to revolutionize cancer diagnostics and literally write the book on laboratory techniques in cancer research and diagnosis. Every pathologist and oncologist alive owes something to her.
my similar boomer opinion is that i think “home economics” or whatever the equivalent is ought to be mandatory for students in middle and high school.
boomer opinion i have is that there are way more young adults out there who legit don’t know how to take care of themselves in very basic ways than we’d probably be comfortable with knowing
July 26, 2025 at 3:30 AM
Fantastic silver basement membrane stain. It takes skill to do that reliably. That's a decent Congo Red too. The EM is crisp. Did they do en bloc staining, or is that all on the grid?
July 26, 2025 at 2:37 AM
You can argue or shift blame. I've pulled people out the window of a halfway-submerged car. I've seen the bodies of people carried away, and the bodies of divers that died trying to retrieve them. We can afford prevention and response. Not doing so is a choice.
July 5, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Proper forecasting and alerts save lives here. We have city-wide broadcast equipment for weather alerts. The climate is changing. It's going to get worse. As a country, we need a top of the line national weather service and disaster response. We don't anymore. People will die as a result.
July 5, 2025 at 9:59 PM
I live in Central Texas, and have for a long time. First, flooding isn't unusual. The ground is clay. Rain doesn't soak in like it does in other places. We build for it. July flooding is unusual. Second, people do die in floods, mostly because they drive through floodwater. This is different. 1/2
July 5, 2025 at 9:51 PM
It is insane. And it's where I live. If I know my mayor, she won't let this stand. I'm just like him. Germany. Ft. Lewis. My parents are citizens. Just like him. I'm a 15-year Army veteran, drill sergeant, and professor. My mother is Mexican. Deport me. It'll be fun to use all the legal insurance.
This. Is. Insane.
Read this, please.
Deporting children of military veterans because they were born on an overseas military base.

This man has no citizenship now.
June 27, 2025 at 4:13 AM
"Benign" is a beautiful word to anyone that ever had a biopsy. It's a beautiful sight for us too. This stain was done by students learning to do special stains for pathology diagnosis.
June 27, 2025 at 2:17 AM
I've been in that boat. Building a histology course on the fly. 6 years of teaching functional histology, and I'm still in that boat. I learn something new every time I teach it. If I do a good job, I get a few questions I have to look up. That means they're listening and engaging.
June 6, 2025 at 11:50 PM
I do in fact have my own biopsy lab. However, I still can't diagnose prostate cancer because that requires 12 yrs of education to read the slides properly. I teach how to turn a biopsy into data. Pathologists read the data. The idea that one person can diagnose this without a whole hospital is 🤪
May 20, 2025 at 1:38 AM
This kind of dumb can only be accomplished with "AI."

Good call. You caught the fleet of Stryker vehicles I kept hidden in my closet. Deleting my file when I was in the middle of conversation with the poor befuddled supply sergeant doesn't stink with the musk of incompetence either.
March 20, 2025 at 3:24 AM
CIF is turning in all the equipment issued to you. They make you clean it and they inspect it.

That's like getting a phone call that you have to take a calculus test from 10th grade to keep your diploma. But you have your diploma already. And you took that calculus test.
March 20, 2025 at 3:19 AM
I just had the most surreal experience. Veterans will understand, and I'll explain for non-veterans.

I just got a call saying my CIF turn-in was never completed 10 years ago, and I need to fix it. We all joked about it, but it actually happened. 1/3
March 20, 2025 at 3:16 AM
You reminded me of a similar story from my lab.
When I took over as director of my lab, I put up disposal instructions over every sink. I asked the chem chair to review it just in case. He had a couple of recommendations, but said it looked good.

6 minutes later, he knocked on my door and asked "Did I see picric acid on the list? Can I see it?"
We were in organic chemistry lab when a police officer walked through and said "get out".

Then a fireman walked through the same way and said, "he's not kidding. Get out of the building.".

We left.

The entire building was shut down over a gallon sized bottle of picric acid that had crystalized.
March 2, 2025 at 3:46 AM
I showed him the aqueous picric acid and Bouin solution, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

"We found some crystallized picric acid when I first started, and we had to ask the military to send EOD from the nearby base. I had to be sure."
March 2, 2025 at 3:15 AM
When I took over as director of my lab, I put up disposal instructions over every sink. I asked the chem chair to review it just in case. He had a couple of recommendations, but said it looked good.

6 minutes later, he knocked on my door and asked "Did I see picric acid on the list? Can I see it?"
We were in organic chemistry lab when a police officer walked through and said "get out".

Then a fireman walked through the same way and said, "he's not kidding. Get out of the building.".

We left.

The entire building was shut down over a gallon sized bottle of picric acid that had crystalized.
As an undergrad lab tech, I was assigned to do a chemical inventory, long overdue, for my biochemistry PI.

And that's when I found a vial of picric acid from the 1970's and got to meet the university's bomb squad.

Let's talk about picric acid & why it sends shivers down the spines of chemists.
March 2, 2025 at 3:15 AM
The point was so obvious, I have a profile picture of myself grilling while wearing cargo shorts, and I know nothing about that show was about Drake.

Public Enemy would have been more subtle.
February 10, 2025 at 4:54 AM