Histology for Pathologists - My first post-post graduate textbook

When I asked my mentors about which textbook is absolutely essential for a pathologist in training, the recommended this glorious tome. It's so expensive it took me forever to buy . . . but it's for my career, and I've always been the type of student who prefers to have a paper copy of whatever I'm reading. 

This book is 1300+ words, which even with the appendix included is pretty intimidating. Another mentor of mine said he'd been practicing pathology for thirty years, yet he feels like he's only scratched the surface of what's known about the subject. Never mind what isn't known. 

My current goal is read or review at least one section of this book a day. I know my own limitations. I will not be able to learn much by studying once a week, or a month before each of the many tests I will have to take. 

On the bright side, I find all this so freaking cool that I'm more excited than intimidated right now. I've started reading tonight and already reminded myself of something I probably already knew and learned something I'm probably going to babble about tomorrow.

Eh, I'll babble about it right now. I got the image bank so now I get to share awesome pictures.

 

On the right are Toker cells (Figure 1.3 from Histology for Pathologists). 

If I was a cool blogger, I could probably use one of the arrow thingies to point them out. They are the "clear cells with pyknotic nuclei with a clear halo, surrounded by a narrow rim of cytoplasm". Two of them on the left corner sort of look like they're the eyes of a sad owl?

Anyway. They're important because they's a normal variant of cells, often found around the nipple, which can be mistaken for Paget's disease. Actually, there's apparently question of how benign they are, or if they're precursors of Paget's disease, but that's out of my league. 

Paget's disease is a commonish disorder that I should probably know more about, but I don't. There are so many Paget's diseases. Of bone. Of breast. Of other stuff, probably.

On the left is a picture of extra-mammary Paget's disease (see, I told you there was a lot of stuff about Paget). (Figure 1.4 from Histology for Pathologists)

I think I see what the text is telling me about the difference between Paget cells and Toker cells. The nuclei are pleomorphic (fancy way to say they have lots of weird shapes). The textbook tells me that there's more intense staining of the chromatin, but I don't actually see what they mean by that yet. I need more practice.

I do think the Paget cells look "uglier" than the Toker cells. A principle of pathology I've picked up is that normal tissue = pretty, organized while diseased tissue = ugly, messy. That's not always the case. I've seen some visually stunning cancers.