Collagenous colitis in a section of large intestine, Masson’s Trichrome stain using aniline blue as the counter(/collagen) stain. 

SEM of bacteria in deer stool.

I picked it for the campylobacter-like organisms in there (brown corkscrews). Despite being fastidious and sometimes tricky to grow, a good lab should be able to isolate more Campylobacter sp. than shigella and salmonella combined since it is the most common bacterial cause of diarrhea in humans.

Coloured SEM of a macrophage engulfing a mauve Leishmania sp. parasite.

Epidermophyton floccosum, wet prep.

The person who was teaching me mycology had an incredible accent and for the longest time I thought she was telling me to look for “puddle shaped macroconidia”. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why anyone would describe anything as puddle shaped. It wasn’t until the end that I realized she was saying paddle shaped. Oops. They remain “puddles” in my mind though.

Epidermophyton floccosum is one of the dermatophytes, fungi that cause superficial infections of hair, skin, and nails. They generally aren’t a big deal, but there’s a lot of money in antifungals because man, do people hate dandruff and athlete’s foot.

Hyaline cartilage, H&E stain.

Though the photo’s not part of the trachea, the first time I saw this was in a section of trachea. I immediately had one of those trainwreck moments. “Euuuugh, it’s like thousands of eyes staring back at me this is so gross thisistheworstpartofhistoever!” but never managed to look away. I got over it quickly enough. There are worse things in histo, like 4AM shifts (I can do mornings, just not that kind of morning). Plus you don’t even really use your microanatomy in the end.