Long ago I lost count of the number of blogs I have posted in the last nine years. My best estimate would be that it has been about 700 times that I have asked you to spend a few moments with me. But before I became a blogger, writing for pleasure (mine, if not yours,) I wrote a few articles published in medical journals–not enough articles for me to be considered an academic, but enough to have multiple mentions in Index Medicus, the Yellow Pages of medical articles in reputable journals.

What was I writing about? Much like my current blogs, every scientific paper was different from the last, with a different focus and frequently intended for a different audience. My earliest papers were predominantly case studies, reporting interesting and/or previously undescribed phenomena I encountered while doing my first 100 autopsies as a pathology resident. One of the papers integrated in-utero radiographic findings with autopsy findings in a condition known as polysplenia¹. A second case ² involved detective work à la Quincy, as a colleague and I traced a patient’s history to determine the source of a triangular portion of plastic in their stomach that had caused fatal blood loss. Our investigation and publication earned us our hospital’s Resident Research of the Year award–scant consolation to the family of the deceased.

While still in my residency, my next published paper dealt with the use of frozen sections on needle biopsies of the breast for the diagnosis of breast cancer ³. My paper, based on a series of cases at my hospital, took a position against this practice. This was significant in an era when a malignant diagnosis on a frozen section of a breast biopsy was frequently followed by a modified radical mastectomy. After the paper’s publication a nationally known pathologist asked me to contribute a chapter to his forthcoming book on breast pathology. In a major career faux pas, I passed on the opportunity.

As my residency closed, I was asked to contribute a thought piece to another national journal, discussing the future of pathology ⁴. 45 years later I don’t remember what I saw in my crystal ball, although I know I failed to predict the world of genomics, digitization, and artificial intelligence, all of which have revolutionized pathology.

Once in my career as a community hospital jack-of-all-trades pathologist, my paper writing tapered off significantly. A short piece on urine cultures ⁵ (fun stuff) was followed many years later by a detailed description of a simple inking technique to prevent mix-ups of biopsy specimens in the lab ⁶. Significant in its time, that method is now out-moded with the easy availability of bar-coding and DNA analysis to confirm specimen identity.

Throughout my career, the laboratory data I have provided has been used in countless conference presentations, abstracts, and journal publications. While my name appears on many of those, I don’t feel much personal connection with them. My hands weren’t on the keyboard or posterboard.

In retirement, my medical writing days are past–almost. My as-yet-unproduced play does have a medical aspect. As the saying goes, write what you know, and know what you write. So far, it has worked for me.

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For those of you who are curious:

• ¹ Arch Pathol Lab Med. 107:202-203, 1983
• ² Southern Medical Journal. 74:900-901, 1981
• _³ Breast. 8:11-13, 1982
• ⁴ Pathologist. 37:1983
• ⁵ Laboratory Medicine.1985
• ⁶ Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2009;133:295-297