Tracking the XXs, revealing the universe
Grasp of invisible patterns helps care for people
WHEN most people look at chromosomes, all they see are XX and XY patterns, but when the newly elected president of the Society of Medical Laboratory Technologists of South Africa looks at these images, she sees a world invisible to the naked eye.
Port Elizabeth’s Carol Massyn is the head of the only cytogenetics laboratory in the Eastern Cape – at St George’s Pathcare Laboratory. She always had a passion for medicine but only realised in matric what field she would follow.
“When I was younger, I always had a passion for biology, and wanted to be a nurse or a doctor and when I was doing matric at Westering High School, I heard about cytogenetics and decided, that’s the path I wanted follow,” Massyn said.
Cytogenetics is the field of chromosomal DNA and genetic abnormalities. These are conditions that one may inherit from either parent or as a new mutation which might have occurred in a particular conception development either as a baby or later in life. Many of these conditions can be tested for and that is where Massyn comes in. “Mostly my work involves sitting down with families, taking a good family history, offering possible tests and then feeding back results to parents and referring them to a doctor,” she said.
Cape Town born Massyn moved to Port Elizabeth with her family in 1975 and finished school at Westering before studying medical technology, majoring first in cytology, at the then Port Elizabeth Technical College. When I got married, we moved to Cape Town and once there I furthered my studies at the University of Cape Town and majored in cytogenetics. I’ve always had a love for the medical side of things and a love of people,” the 55-year-old Cytogenetics specialist said.
The mother of two girls divides her time between job and family. As well as running a clinic at Dora Nginza Hospital, she lectures part-time in genetics at NMMU and presides over the Society of Medical Laboratory Technologists of South Africa.
“I’ve got involved in training, setting the national board exam for the qualification. I run a weekly genetic clinic in the department at Dora Nginza, where we work with pediatricians and do diagnostic work to confirm or exclude possible genetic conditions in the children. And here at St George’s Pathcare Laboratory, we do paternity testing, DNA testing and diagnostic involved with chromosome abnormalities,” she said.
Massyn still finds the time to spend time with her family in St Francis where she reconnect with her husband Joss, to whom she has been married for 35 years. She has been involved in the Health Profession Council of South Africa that regulates medical technology, and has just completed her five-year term.
Down Syndrome is the most common inherited condition, she said, and so she has become involved in a support group called the Port Elizabeth Down Syndrome Association, for families receiving state medical care who have children suffering from Down Syndrome.
The group has built up as she began by seeing two or three children a week with this syndrome and as many as 20 children a week.