Chemistry

CMPN: Complete Metabolic Panel. You've all gotten one of those.
MP: Basic Metabolic Panel. Less tests involved. I'll write an article on the panels later.

CK or CPK: Creatinine phosphokinase tests for muscle damage. Usually it's stored in muscles, so if the muscles get damaged, they would leak into the blood.
CK-MB: Creatine Kinase MB: heart and muscle. If both CK and CK-MB are high, then you had heart damage, such as from a heart attack. But if this is low and CK is high, then other muscles have been damaged.
1TROP: Troponin, a protein found only in the heart muscle, is released when the heart is damaged, usually from a heart attack. It's more specific to heart, not just skeletal muscle, damage than other tests and it stays elevated for a longer period of time. High troponin signals that a heart attack happened, or, in the case of angina (chest pain), is likely to happen. It could also indicate various other types of heart damage, like myocarditis (heart inflammation) or cardiomyopathy (weakened heart).
PBNP: (long name for protein) It diagnoses congestive heart failure (heart can't pump blood like it used to and has to work harder) because it's secreted by the heart to regulate blood pressure and fluid balance, in response to ventricle expansion and/or pressure overload. It increases if your heart isn't working properly.
Mg Magnesium. An abnormal level says that you are having problems. Too much could be kidney failure, dehydration, diabetic ketoacidosis (body breaks down fat, releasing toxic ketones), Addison's (bad adrenal glands, which control stress and blood pressure). Too little could be problems related to alcoholism, digestive issues, parathyroid or adrenal glands not functioning, too much insulin.
K Potassium. People on diuretics or with kidney or adrenal damage might have out of wack potassium levels. It also check nutrition and whether cancer treatments are causing cell lysis, which could make potassium levels high in the blood. More info on Potassium test

TSH: Thyroid stimulating hormone. The thyroid controls metabolism, how fast your body works, and growth. Too little TSH signals overactive thyroid, from Graves disease or too much iodine in the body.
GTT: Glucose tolerance testing, especially used with diabetes, is when the person fasts for a while, then drinks something really sugary to tell how fast glucose is broken down by the body.
BUN: Blood Urea Nitrogen, test for kidney failure. Protein is broken down into amino acids which has the nitrogen removed by the liver, forming urea. Urea is carried through the blood stream to the kidneys, where it's filtered out of the blood and expelled as urine.
Creatinine: Blood test for kidney failure. Creatinine is a waste product from an energy creating process in the muscles. It's released constantly, then expelled by the kidneys. If the kidneys aren't working, it builds up in the blood.
BAC: Blood Alcohol Concentration
ANA: Antinuclear Antibody, antibodies which attack the nucleus of the cell, attach self not just nonself. Their presence indicates an autoimmune disease, like lupus.

From my mentor person, a cardiologist, "BNP levels rise with heart failure and are used to diagnose heart failure. However, they rise to a lesser degree with a heart attack, or really with anything that causes a big stress on the body (like a really bad infection, or kidney failure). But they rise the most with heart failure.

Someone who has a big heart attack, or many small ones, could go into heart failure. So, heart attacks are one of the big causes of heart failure.  Heart failure doesn't really cause a heart attack, but it could certainly stress the heart (and make troponin go up a tiny bit.)

The best uses for BNP are to 1) diagnose heart failure, and 2) monitor patients who have heart failure to try to treat them better, using the BNP to help know when they still have too much fluid in their bodies and need more medicine."

This is interesting. I usually just see the lavender topped tube. They have a holish thing on the top (the blood can go in, but not out), where I guess blood is pulled in through a vacuum. Maybe I'll ask some phlebotomists the next time I'm in the lab how blood drawing works.

Information from medicineplus.gov, healthline, and labtestsonline

Pathology Lab

In the pathology department, I worked with the surgical pathology assistant. The pathology department is a lot less computer-based than the lab. The slide labels are written by hand. The filing system is mostly by hand. Each specimen is given an ID that conveys information; such as this specimen is the 400th specimen of the year at this hospital. The pathology lab goes through about 5000 specimens a year or about 17 a day, while the lab goes through a few hundred a week. 

While the lab normally has four lab technicians and four phlebotomists at any time of the day or night, the pathology department contains the pathology assistant and the pathologist and is only open during normal working hours. In the morning, rings of -25 degrees Celsius ice are made in case slides need to be made quickly. The specimen would be frozen within ice, and then a grinder would take off thin shavings until it reached the right piece of the tissue. The sliver would be put in a slide. 

There is also a procession of dipping juices to self-dye specimens. Usually, intriguing tissue pieces are put in tiny hole punched boxes called cassettes to be dumped in formalin, which will eventually be sent off to become slides. If slides need to be made quickly, they’re dipped in water, various alcohols and dyes, in a specific order, for specific times, until they eventually become dyed in purples and pinks. 

Slides need to be made very fast during procedures such as cancer surgeries where the surgeon needs to know how far the cancer spread so that they know how much they need to remove. After slides are made, the pathologist looks at them either in the tissue room or at their desk, under a microscope, and look for signals of disease.

Usually, there are sigmoid colons with diverticulitis, gastrointestinal scrapings from esophageal cancer (for example), placentas from pregnancies that were strange or didn’t go as planned, appendixes with appendicitis, gallbladders with gallstones and swollen to twice their normal size. The colons are cleaned out and pinned to wax while they sit in formalin for a few hours. Placentas stay in their bucket. Everything else goes in a Ziploc bag with formalin to wait for the pathologist to do a macroscopic inspection.   slide of placenta lining  sigmoid colon