Sometimes the equipment we use can be treacherous. This is a microtome used to cut tissue embedded in paraffin into very very thin pieces. Oh thin? Well the average slice I cut is 5 microns thin. A human hair is 50 to 70 microns thick.
Two things make this treacherous. One is the fact it uses a blade so sharp that if you’re not paying attention, it could slice open your finger before you felt the pain. The blade we use slices bone for the pathologist samples.
The second thing I personally find treacherous about this machine is the fact that you can screw up a sample and there is no way to fix it. Unlike collecting blood, there no way to get a sample once it’s exhausted.
Once the tissues are cut, then they are placed on a slide where their are baked and placed in a stainer where they eventually go to a pathologist for review.
