Week 7

The last week of immersion started with trying to continue working on my clinical research project and ended much more exciting. On Thursday, I once again traveled to New Jersey to work with the sheep for the basic science study. This time, the doctors were performing surgery on the animals, which I was excited to be present for. For the first sheep of two, I was even shown how to scrub in so that I could assist with the surgery. It was very confusing what I could and could not touch, the inside of this, the outside of that, don't touch this color blue but this other shade of blue is fine. I couldn't even adjust my own glasses so I eventually had the technician who was present just remove my glasses and put them off to the side. My facemask shot my warm breath right up into my eyes and fogged up my glasses every breath so they had to go. But it was very interesting to be able to help the doctors during the surgery, doing similar things that I have seen the assisting doctor do for Dr. Hartl during surgery on a patient. Both sheep were fine afterwards, but it was a lot more exhausting actively working on the surgery than it was to just stand in the OR for a few hours watching. This was basically the one part of the basic science project that I was not present for initially, so it was a good way to wrap up my summer immersion.