People think that all pathology is to do with death when, in reality, the majority of it is to do with the living in order to come to a decision about diagnosis. Families can be terrified by pathology; they think it's all grisly but it's not and I love my work. If you give a right diagnosis proper treatment can be started on a patient.

My speciality is histopathology, which deals with tissue, and our biggest job is diagnosing cancer. In particular, I'm involved with lung cancer because it is the most common killer related to smoking. A surgeon will remove any lump and send it to us. We freeze it within three minutes, look at the tissue and tell the surgeon whether it's cancer. This will be turned around in 10-15 minutes while someone is in theatre.

Death is a part of my job because I deal with autopsies, which are carried out when we don't know why someone has died. With the consent of the family I view the body, open it up and look at the organs. It's done with respect and it's well supervised. Autopsies tell you exactly why a disease happened and how it affects the person.

I am also involved with cases of sudden cardiac death up to the age of 35. If someone drops dead suddenly the body is immediately the property of the coroner, who will normally ask a pathologist to carry out an autopsy. We've started investigating the families and have found that there are often family histories of sudden death. So, as an expert cardiac pathologist, I'm involved in genetic analysis, searching for electrical abnormalities.

I'm the only one doing this work in the country and I'm training up other pathologists. It's a lot of work and costs the NHS a lot of money, but it's worth it to prevent these sudden deaths.