This past week, I switched gears a bit and delved more into my research project as well as seeing other parts of Weill Hospital. In the beginning of the week, I shadowed the clinicians on rounds in the pediatric ICU. It was quite different from being at HSS and seeing older patients with orthopedic medical problems, which to me is more mechanical, although there are certainly co-morbidities involved. Many of the patients in PICU (ranging from a few months old to being a teenager) were on respirators dealing with many diseases ranging from burns to serious infections, which was probably the saddest part of my whole experience here thus far. The doctors were very kind and detailed about each patient as they made their rounds. I was struck about how compassionate they were to the worried parents. I appreciate the opportunity to see these rounds, and I think this memory will stay with me when I think about my Immersion term here.
As for my research, I am learning how to use FTIR, and analyze bone scans using a software called Isys. It has been very productive, and I am learning how the organic chemistry of bone changes as bone remodels or if it has a degenerative disease such as osteoporosis. I think FTIR provides valuable data that engineers can correlate to the mechanical and histological properties of the bone in order to provide a better picture of what is happening at the interaction of the biochemistry, molecules, and mechanics of the bone. I look forward to continuing my research project in FTIR analysis, and hope that I can take this further and use it as a tool for my future research experiments.
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