It is a classic. Lucy and Ethel, working faster and faster to wrap chocolate candies as the little morsels come shooting down the assembly line.

“If any get by you, you’re fired,” the boss has told the gals.

So to keep up with the speeding line, Lucy and Ethel sweep the candies into their mouths, their hats, and as a last resort, their blouses.

And then the boss walks back in, notices that no candies are escaping the girls, and calls to the man running the line “Speed it up, Paul.” Yes, the hamster wheel never stops…it just gets faster.

I suspect most surgical pathologists feel that they are on that wheel at times. I know on some days I do. The histotechs and cytotechs bring me stacks of slide trays. I grab the top tray and review each slide, carefully preparing my reports. And when I turn back to the stack it has only grown. My techs must have crept silently into the office to add a prostate case here, some bladder biopsies there, and more cytology everywhere.

Unlike Lucy and Ethel, we pathologists can’t hide slides in our hats or swallow them whole. Each slide, each case, and each patient needs as much undivided attention as we can provide. At least most of us are self-motivated enough that we don’t need a boss on our backs threatening to fire us.

I have to admit that some of the hamster wheel feelings are self-imposed. I work hard to get my slides all reviewed by a particular time of day. After that time the transmission of impulses from my retinas to my occipital lobe slows and my scribblings on biopsy worksheets become harder to decipher. A feeling of exhaustion creeps into me. There is only so much caffeine can accomplish…

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I have lots of slides in my office, but I have even more pens. There are clickable ballpoints and capped ballpoints. Markers in red and markers in blue. Some with corporate labels, some with vendor labels, and some with labels apropos of nothing. I use them at my desk, at my microscope, and at my back counter–and after I have used one I leave it where it lays. Like chopsticks littering the table after Chinese take-out meal, the pens are everywhere. I just call it pen-demonium. It’s a good thing I have never owned a valuable pen, it would just get lost in the morass. As far as I am concerned, any old pen will do.

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What do you have too much of? Let me know at chidoc@post.com