Hello All! What an awesome actual first week it was…much better than sitting in the airport and dealing with flights :). This week I went to the ENT(Ear Nose and Throat Institute) Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and went to Emory Thursday and Friday.
Monday morning was started with a lovely bumper to bumper episode of Monday morning rush hour traffic. We are not used to this in Telluride, and in Atlanta traffic is a big problem that requires you to schedule literally everything around.
With the ENT, I got to see three components of their operation. First, I saw the business side of it all at the headquarters. Here Dr Gallups has created a well organized and efficient set up for the various employees to schedule appointments, file for billing, call and talk to patients, etc. Dr Gallups’ institute is the size of a hospital, but spread all over the state of Georgia – which can make things confusing. This is why they have the headquarters, so that all scheduling andinformation is stored and dealt with in one place. As it may sound boring to be in the office setting, this was actually a very interesting experience because I got to see how they organize and operate, with the help of their central data base. After having a day in the office I got to spend an ENTIRE day in the OR watching surgery. This was the coolest experience I have had yet. I watched various people’ssinuses/throats get worked on(from deviated septums to setoplastlys to tonsillectomy). My favorite surgery was watching someone get an eyebrow lift. I was right next to the doctor as he was drawing and making incisions on the patients face. After shadowing in the OR I headed over to one of their 13 clinics. Here I watched patients come in and hear from Dr Hanovar on how to make them feel better. The highlight of being in the clinic was that the TV show Little People of Atlanta was being filmed, and the whole clinic was blocked off for a period of the day to film one of their stars in the clinic. This was quite entertaining. I look forward to my next weeks with the ENT.
Emory this week was so much fun. I am working under Dr Brandi Wynne and her two undergraduate students that I will work with. They are all working to see the effect of a high sodium diet on hypertension, specifically in mice. My first day was spent homogenizing a solution of mice aorta and kidneys with a lysis buffer solution. We were doing this to get the aorta and kidney cells to explode, releasing the proteins within the cell. From here they were going to do a protein isolation lab to see the effect of the high sodium diet on these two critical organs. Next, I worked with the other undergraduate student who works on a much smaller level with cell cultures to identify the pathway in which the cells react to hypertension. We spent the day looking in a microscope to look for antibodies surrounding the different cells. I also look forward to spending more time in the lab as these girls have taught me how much fun research can really be!
All in all it was a great first week and I look forward to the upcoming time I have with these incredible mentors of mine.
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