Compared to last week, this week has been more intense and more exciting. This week I was able to watch a rat surgery from Dr. Schwartz lab inducing seizure with 4AP injecting directly to the thalamus. The surgery was started by making a craniotomy on the left hemisphere of the skull and drilled a small hole on the right hemisphere where we wanted to put the second electrode in. The surgery went well and the seizure could be directly visualized by the change of spikes. By watching the rat surgery, it made me feel that there were many things that we could try doing to improve our mice craniotomy surgeries as well. For example, unlike mice skull, rat skull is much thicker that they had to thinner the skull before removing to minimize damaging the thalamus and bleeding. Even though we didn't usually do that for mice craniotomies, it could be a valuable techniques that decrease chances of inflammation after the surgery, which could eventually improve image qualities.
I also watched another human surgery that ran for almost 8 hours. The surgery seemed to be difficult due to depth and size of the tumor and took much longer than anybody expected. But one thing that left me a very deep impression was the patient herself. Unlike other patients, she walked into the surgery room by herself and when the assistants tried to explain to her the risk of losing some significant nerves during the surgery, she was laughing and joking about how she lost some already in previous ones. She appeared to me that she had the courage to fight the tumors with her optimistic attitude about her life and it was really admirable. It kind of made me feel like when we are conducting Biomedical researches, no matter how difficult and frustrating it could be, as long as the patients haven't given up their life, we shouldn't give up easily on our projects either.
Away from science, we went to watch ballet show Swan Lake and it was gorgeous! This was the second time I watched Swan Lake and last time was ice ballet, which was slightly different experience compared to the traditional ballet. Watching the beautiful ballet made me feel like I want to start dancing again and make this would be something I will start again when I get back to Ithaca.
The immersion term offers PhD candidates in biomedical engineering 7 weeks of first-hand experience in a clinical environment with physicians at Weill Cornell Medical College and associated institutions. Students observe physicians in various settings and participate in clinical research. This blog is a record of these experiences by the term participants.
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