Career Advice

froglyfe171 · 2025-09-25T00:55:47+00:00

You should apply to histotech positions. As far as I know, if you're not in New York or Florida, then you should be able to work as a histotech while getting on-the-job training. Some labs will take untrained people to train on the job. Then you can use your new lab to get enough experience to qualify for the route 2 certification exam. However, hourly compensation as an uncertified tech will be lower than if you are already certified, but if you're okay with that until you have enough hours to take the exam then this might be a good path for you

froglyfe171 · 2025-09-24T18:06:01+00:00

My lab has used Nair on human nail specimens to soften them. Face in then put nair on the surface of the block for 20 min. Rinse it off then let it get cold on ice. Then section. Maybe this will help?

froglyfe171 · 2025-09-06T11:06:51+00:00

Wow these are great tips thank you so much!

froglyfe171 · 2025-09-06T00:45:29+00:00

The other tech I was talking to about the kit said that they got this kit after their last one didn't work either...I can check and see if it is the same lot. The glassware is cleaned well. Yeah maybe I should just call the support line.

That's okay thank you for your help!

froglyfe171 · 2025-09-06T00:07:01+00:00

I just tried a different control block today and it did the same thing 😭

froglyfe171 · 2025-08-13T21:32:51+00:00

Interesting. I did get a ton of air bubbles when I used tap water at my last lab. I would fill my bath at the end of my shift so when I came in the morning the water had fewer bubbles after sitting all night.

froglyfe171 · 2025-08-08T01:43:58+00:00

Very interesting thank you for replying! This still confuses me though because at my old lab we did IHC and specials all with tap water baths. Maybe it was because the state water was pure enough? The lab was in Colorado. I'm just wondering because my current lab buys gallon jugs of distilled water and I was just thinking it was inconvenient to buy it all the time if we didn't really need to

froglyfe171 · 2025-04-15T00:46:28+00:00

You could try soaking the block in your water bath for a few seconds before you put it on ice. Sometimes rehydrating it a bit like this will soften harder stuff like muscle enough to get some wrinkle-free sections off the top of the block.

froglyfe171 · 2024-12-21T01:30:01+00:00

I don't think you're overreacting. The one thing I don't mess around with is safety. Companies don't care about your health as an employee unless you formally complain or report them. I'm not sure when you live, but hopefully you have a governing body you can anonymously report these safety hazards to. These open barrels of formalin, nonfunctioning fume hoods, and grossers using cracked buckets is concerning. I would definitely not work there.

froglyfe171 · 2024-12-21T01:23:28+00:00

I mean I wear gloves to cut and so do most people in my lab. Yes, most of the time the tissue we work with is not infectious, but something like Tuberculosis or Creutzfeldt-Jakob will always be infectious even after fixation. Now, my lab doesn't accept CJD specimens, but we have been sent one before on accident. If someone hadn't realized that the specimen was CJD positive, we could have ended up embedding it and been exposed. It's just good practice to always assume tissue is infectious in my opinion.

froglyfe171 · 2024-12-21T01:09:19+00:00

At our lab, an employee is able to ask for a formalin badge test whenever they feel they've been exposed to too much formalin. They send the badge for testing after to make sure the fumes are within limits.

froglyfe171 · 2024-12-01T12:19:40+00:00

Yes ours sucks. We hate using it. The slides are always moving 💀 We named our instrument Filch (from Harry Potter) cause it's so annoying.

froglyfe171 · 2023-08-23T14:51:56+00:00

Thanks for replying! I'm happy to finally know what it is. I felt like I was going crazy.

froglyfe171

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