Congratulations Tim, It has been a long road. Interesting how we both worked at VMC at different times and I would have to say it was prominent in our careers. It was where I was first exposed to Histology. I have enjoyed your friendship and comradeship.
Take care Victor Sent from my iPad > On Sep 9, 2021, at 9:26 AM, Morken, Timothy via Histonet > <histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu> wrote: > > > After 40 years in the lab I've decided to retire this year - in a week > actually! > > It has been an interesting 4 decades... > > I started out in an EM lab after getting a degree in Physiology and then > competing a 2 year EM course at Delta College in Stockton, CA - the only > dedicated EM program at that time. I started out running a scanning EM lab > for an electronics company looking at microchips but after a couple years > moved to a hosptial lab in Fresno, CA running their EM lab. I was the only > one, so from day one was the "Manager" of the lab! I did about 150 EM cases a > year and in those days it was a mix of kidney and tumor cases - there was no > IHC yet so some tumor diagnostics depended on EM. I did not have quite enough > work to keep me busy so I started hanging out in the histology lab. As with > many people in this field the day I started working there was the first I had > heard of "histology." At first it was helping set up grossing, coverslipping > slides and doing immunofluorescence for the kidney cases (and taking > "kodachromes" of the results! Does anyone under 30 know what a Kodachrome > is?!). But then our director wanted to bring in IHC and so had a tech from a > lab at Cedars Sinai in LA come to teach us how to do it. We did all of 10 > stains at first. Of course it was all manual and so had to know what was > going on with every step. I didn't use an automated stainer for the first 12 > years that I did IHC, and at times was doing 150 slides a day manually. > > Gradually I ended up doing half time in histology and learned cutting, > special stains, muscle histochemistry, immunofluorescence for kidney cases. I > decided to work on the HT exam since I was doing all that work anyway. We had > a lab of four men - pretty rare, Imagine - and we started a study group to > all take the test. We met after work a couple times a week for 6 months > pretty much memorizing the Sheehan book. We all took the HT and all but one > passed. Later I passed the HTL as well. > > After 11 years of that I moved on to a job in Saudi Arabia - and my wife and > daughter went along. I managed the IHC and muscle lab at King Faisal > Specialist Hospital in Riyadh. My wife was lucky enough to get a teaching > position at the American School where our daughter was in 9th grade. That > made all the difference in our life there because if she had not gotten a job > I don't think we would have stayed there 5 years. She would have been stuck > doing pretty much nothing. I moved on to managing the histology lab as > whole. Living in another country is a great experience, even if it is a > totally different culture. It certainly changed our outlook on the world and > I would not trade that experience for anything. We also did a lot of > travelling during those years - being on "that" side of world makes > traveling there much easier! > > Once we decided to leave Saudi I looked for a job back in the States and was > lucky enough to land one at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta in > their Infectious Disease Pathology division. I worked with 5 infectious > disease pathology specialists and a dozen technologists from histotechs to EM > techs, to microbiologists to molecular biologists. We worked on routine cases > to world-wide outbreak cases. During the 5 years I was there we identified at > least one novel human virus every year that caused outbreaks. And that was in > addition to numerous cases of outbreaks of known diseases for which we > received samples from all over the world. Probably the most notorious case > was the anthrax attack after 9/11. Four of us histotechs manned the lab 24 > hours a day, 7 days a week for 6 weeks running IHC tests on endless samples > while trying to get on top of that case. In the middle of it all the power > went out to the facility and we had to work on generator power with temporary > lighting set up in the lab and battery packs to keep the equipment running. > After 9/11 and then anthrax everyone was thinking it was a bioterror attack > by the same group, so things were crazy. When I think of all the efforts we > made to enhance our detection and diagnostic capabilities, and all our > meetings about how to handle outbreaks, it was hard to see the stumbles the > CDC made in this current pandemic. But I can say that we had discussed, > studied and predicted pretty much everything that has happened in this Covid > 19 era. Indeed, we had the first-hand experience with SARS in the last year I > was there, so knew exactly how it could play out. > > Finally we decided to move back to California and I was able to connect with > an old friend to get a position at Lab Vision in Fremont, CA. This company > made the Dako Autostainer and also had a large offering of antibodies. We > only had 25 people but were doing very well and still had a "Startup" > culture. That was a very interesting experience after being on the "customer" > side for so long. I got to see a lot of different labs, go to a lot of > meetings, make a lot of contacts and travel to many other countries to work > with distributors. I would recommend working for vendor to anyone to get a > real idea of the whole breadth of our field. > > Once Lab Vision was taken over by Thermo Fisher it became very corporate I > decided to go back to the medical lab and ended up at UCSF managing the > histology lab. After a few years of that I moved back to the EM lab after the > supervisor there retired and they could not find anyone else. So, I ended up > back in the place I began! But it is a great place with great people so has > been a very good time the last 12 years. > > When I think back, I started in the lab when the only automation was the > tissue processor. Even our specimen logs were all hand-written. Slide labels > were typed on a typewriter - there were no computers. We had a staining run > set up by a microtome so that person could move the slides along when the > timer went off. And there was no fume hood over it, so the histo lab always > smelled of xylene, alcohol and formalin fumes. People from outside the lab > would come in and almost keel over. Our lab today has no smell at all - we > have so many hoods nothing can escape! And much of the lab is automated - > IHC, specials, H&E, embedding machines. > > I always recommend to any new tech that they learn whatever there is to learn > in any lab they happen to be in and to not be limited by a job description. > You never know when some seemingly obscure thing you learn will come in handy > down the road. Take opportunities as they come up. You never know if you will > get that opportunity again. > > Anyway, it has been a good run. I hope to do some other things in in the > histology world in the next few years. You never know what will come up! > > Tim Morken > Supervisor, Electron Microscopy/Neuromuscular Special Studies > Department of Pathology > UC San Francisco Medical Center > > _______________________________________________ > Histonet mailing list > Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu > http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet
