Sarah Henretta/Dr. Cristofanilli - Week 8

I had a great last week! 

I started the week focusing on wrapping up my project. I made some last-minute adjustments to the code I have written and finished a manual explaining how to use the code. My goal was to make the transition process as easy as possible for everyone in the lab. On Monday I had a great conversation with Dr. Cristofanilli and Dr. Reduzzi about continuing this project while in Ithaca which is exciting! I hope to be able to tie this experience into my thesis research, as I want to keep my research as patient focused as possible. 

I also spent my last few days in the clinic with Dr. Cristofanilli. I appreciated getting to know the patients over the past eight weeks and it was great to be able to say bye to a few of them. I saw a few new patients this week as well and one was especially impactful. This patient recently had a baby and received her diagnosis in the last month of her pregnancy. She traveled across the country to receive a diagnosis from Dr. Cristofanilli because all her other doctors had conflicting opinions on whether she had inflammatory breast cancer or another subset of breast cancer. Upon examination, Dr. Cristofanilli confirmed she had inflammatory breast cancer and talked about the importance of doctors knowing all the possible presentations of a disease instead of just the most common or “textbook” presentations. 

Overall, these past eight weeks were incredibly impactful for me. I look forward to continuing a collaboration with my research lab here and hope to incorporate patient care into my future endeavors somehow. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ana Witkowski / Dr. Bostrom Week 8

 This summer has gone by so fast! This week was mostly just wrapping up the summer. I went and saw a little bit more of the mouse gait analysis and acclimation. Learning how to acclimate the mice for the gait analysis is super important for the consistency of the data, as mice that haven’t been acclimatized to the treadmill have a much wider spread and learning curve over the experiment. We learned how the mice get tire after about a minute of running, even if you spread that minute out over a couple bouts of running, which was super important for the next couple days of acclimation.  I also got the opportunity this week to shadow in the Gait and Motion Analysis lab for a case. I have never seen the human gait analysis before, so I was immensely grateful for this opportunity! I spent the afternoon learning about the cameras and the calibration, watching a full PT exam, and then watching a gait analysis videotaping. There are 14 cameras, 4 force plates, and so many reflective s...
Read more

Ellen Brooks/Dr. Robert Marx - Week 1

One action packed week complete already! The first few days of this week were filled with orientation meetings, introductions to Dr. Marx and his clinical team, and tours of the research facilities.  On Monday, I started shadowing Dr. Marx, his resident Dr. Braum, and his PA, Joe, through clinical rotations. As a person that has been in the patients chair many times, it is fascinating to see the doctor-patient interaction from the other side and to start to notice how the Dr. Marx is able to connect abnormalities in flexibility and gait to possible diagnoses.  I continued my shadowing of Dr. Marx late in the week in the Operating Room. Here I observed two total knee replacements, a removal of hardware from a previous, complicated ACL repair surgery, and an ACL surgery. The ACL surgery which I observed will be included in an on going research project to determine the optimal graft type (hamstring, or patellar tendon) for ACL repair and the benefit of additional stabilization of...
Read more

Marysol Chu / week 8

  It’s hard to believe that summer immersion has come to an end.     The past two months were extremely valuable in expanding my knowledge of the clinical aspect of my research. I was able to build relationships with clinicians in the field actively working on clinical trials and allowed me to interact with patients and identify needs that still exist despite all the advancements that have been made in medicine.     I could not have asked for a better clinician to shadow throughout the summer. Dr. Gomez made sure I saw as much as I could not just within bone marrow transplant but with other clinicians in the hematology/oncology department. I remember the first couple of weeks were emotionally challenging because of the severity of the complications that some of the patients experienced. It was very difficult for me to see them and their families struggling but at the same time I could see the medical team fighting and doing everything they could for the patient....
Read more