Harry Zou - Dr. Rhee - Week 3

This was an eventful week with the majority of time spent on the clinical side of things. At the beginning of this week, I connected with Dr. Dana Zappetti, a pulmonologist, who connected me with the Director of the Pulmonary ICU. I will start shadowing in the Pulmonary ICU next Monday! On Tuesday, we had an informative lecture on the nuances of both being a mentor as well as a mentee. Then, one of my classmates graciously let me tag along with him as he shadowed Dr. Schwartz, a neurosurgeon. The morning started with us shadowing an endoscopic removal of a pituitary adenoma. This was an easy surgery to watch as there was a screen showing the procedure via the camera on the endoscope. It began with a fellow clearing a path through the nose for Dr. Schwartz to eventually remove the tumor. I am not experienced with surgery, so I was shocked that this procedure was considered minimally invasive given the amount of tissue and bone that the surgeons were removing. Finally, we watched Dr. Schwartz perform a craniotomy to remove brain tumor tissue for further examination. This Friday, I also shadowed an infectious disease doctor, Dr. Christopher Brown, in his clinic. Most of his patients today came for PrEP injections for HIV prevention as well as STD screening. There was an interesting case where a patient had an undiagnosed anti-inflammatory disease that resulted in over-proliferation of macrophages and painful leg sores that had granulomas similar to that of a mycobacterial infection. Even though the patient tested negative for infectious diseases, their team of doctors wanted to completely rule out the possibility of a chronic infection. It was very informative to see Dr. Brown's interactions with his patients and also hear more about his thought process in between seeing patients. 

In terms of research, Mtb grows very slowly so I  am still waiting for them to grow enough so that I have enough genomic DNA to amplify and then sequence. I was able to order the primers and other reagents needed for this project. 

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