Week One

I'm very pleased to say that this first week in NYC has been an absolutely amazing experience that is starting to really make me reconsider my future goals. Right after receiving my Weill Cornell and HSS ID I put on my scrubs was immediately thrusted into the OR and observed three different surgeries over a six hour time frame. However, before watching the surgeries I was introduced to my clinical mentor, Dr. John Kennedy, who is an orthopedic surgeon. Dr. Kennedy briefed me on the surgeries that he was preforming today and at first I was hesitant to observe because of my fear of blood. I'm pleased to say though at after a bit of immediate discomfort I was able to appreciate the fact that these procedures were for the purpose of treating the patients for the better, which made me feel much better.

The next day I prepared a presentation for Dr. Kennedy and his associates on cartilage biomechanics and the research that I am currently conducting at Cornell. He then asked me some very helpful questions about the nature of the project that I'm working on, which I believe be able to help the direction of the project moving forward. Afterwards, we went into the clinic and I was told that I would be interviewing patients in order to obtain information on the reason of their visit, and the details of their condition. I then presented each case to Dr. Kennedy and tried to come up with a conclusion as to what is the issue, and how it could be solved. I was also able to look at MRIs of each patient and was told how to look for the issues that were present in each patient. This day was extremely fun because I deeply enjoyed getting to interact with the patients and trying my best to use my knowledge of biology and mechanics to tackle each case. This day it seemed as though a solution was able to be reached for each patient and that the likelihood of them treating their condition was high.

Wednesday had a more somber tone due to the fact that many of the patients who came to the clinic were not new patients, but instead patients who were returning due to their conditions not changing much after their treatment. This was saddening for me because it made me come to the realization that unfortunately there will be complications that will make helping every patient more difficult, and unfortunately there does not exist good solutions to many of the problems patients face. This is when I realized that it is my job as a biomedical engineer to try and come up with possible solutions for these problems in order to help more people.

Thursday was another clinical day, however instead of working out of HSS we were based out of New York Dermatology Group since this is one of Dr. Kennedy's collaborators. The two procedures that I observed were lipogems and PRP; these procedures had a different feel to them since they were being preformed at a private practice rather than the hospital. Apparently, NYDG has a very high profile client base and many celebrities come to the location to receive various forms of treatment. What excited me was that I was lucky enough to actually meet a celebrity, even though all we said to each other was hi, it was a very cool experience.

To wrap up the week, I went with Dr. Shimozono, Dr. Kennedy's right hand man, to HSS to practice arthroscopic surgery on a cadaver leg. This was by far the coolest experience of the week since it made me feel like I was almost a real doctor. However, I quickly learned that what Dr. Kennedy does is by no means easy and that he is very good at what he does; this realized greatly deepened my respect for him. I was able to remove some scar tissue in the ankle joint capsule and remove some of the cartilage on the talus bone in order to create microfractures in the subchondral bone. The picture below is from the cadaver lab with an image of the joint space being shown on the monitor.