This time I took a little more time to reflect on my experience as a whole. I am writting a week after I have finished my internship. To start, I am amazed at how fast it went. There was so much build up and then all the sudden it is over. Cadaver knee after cadaver knee I did nutty cool things for three weeks and now it is over. It is a very weird thing. I am confused where the time went.
I am so so grateful for this experience. I do not think I could have asked for a better internship. I learned way more then I ever thought I would coming into it. And I also know what I want to do with my life. This outcome could not be better. I am so thankful for Animas High for giving me this opportunity. To have a life path in mind almost seems like a small but impactful weight has been lifted from my life. The other cool thing is that I am stoked about what may be in store for the future in an engineering career. I decided, as I was driving home, that I will come back to SPRI. There is no way I can just take this experience and stop there. If I get the opportunity to come back, I will be beyond stoked. I almost find it funny how much I loved this internship. I think I learned I am a bit of a nerd. I love math and cadavers and hanging out with engineers. It is fairly comical to me, but I 100% accept the nerd side of me. I made some wonderful nerdy friends while at SPRI and I definitely plan to stay connected to them. I am excited to take this new knowledge, share it with others, and eventually use it in my own career. It really opened my eyes to all that is possible in this world. I am honestly really excited to see where it will take me. I want to thank SPRI and everyone who works there for one of the most amazing three weeks of my life. I am so inspired by everything that I was able to experience and everyone I was able to meet. Until next time, thank you.
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Today was my last day at the Steadman Philippon Research Institute. It was a little sad. I tried to appreciate each and everything that happened today and it turned out to be a truly wonderful day. Stryker came in again to let surgeons try a new robot that is now being implemented in surgery. Simply put, the robot and program create a CT image by collecting coordinates, very similar to some of the testing I helped with this week and last week. The coordinates then create a 3D image on a screen that the surgeon is able to see. This is very unique because normally patients get CTs before surgery, but the program allows doctors to create an even more accurate CT image during surgery. The 3D image can be looked at from any angle which opens up visibility. For the demonstration that I was able to watch they were preforming a knee resection. The nutty cool part about this robot is that you lock a tool on to the end of it, put the instrument near the place you will be resecting, and the robot locks itself into a predefined coordinate frame. The surgeon is now able to move the instrument anywhere in the zone but not outside of it. The screen shows this coordinate frame and the surgeon’s progress in relation to his instrument. Basically, this robot cuts surgery time in half, allows surgeons to preform without error and gives them 100% visibility. It was so cool to see this technology in action. I was amazed that this kind of thing exists and I think it has a lot of promise for the future. After that I took a long lunch and then ended up helping with a hip surgery on a full lower body. So far I had only seen cadaver parts, so it was neat to work on a full lower body. It was also really cool to be right in on the action. The surgeon was super cool and really included me in the procedure. After that Marco and Sam were doing some work on the ALL study and I got to help them with that. They let me suture a tendon that was actually going to be used in the study. That made me feel very important. I then watched them work through many challenges and enjoyed the playful smart-alecky conversation back and forth. At this point it was getting late so I decided I should probably get on the road and head back to Durango. I reluctantly left Sam and Marco with their cadaver knee, said my goodbyes, and was on my way. I drove for 5 hours and then all the sudden I was home. And it was over. Here, a surgeon from Stryker is resecting a knee using the robot (the white machine in plastic to his left). He is watching to screen which is showing him his progress.
Today I worked a lot on my LINK project. We finally got the pilot testing data back from analysis and were able to put it into graphs and sit down and really look at it. I was surprised by how complicated it is. There is so much data referring to different things that I got a little wrapped up into trying to make sense of it all. Matt was super helpful in talking it through with me. I was impressed by how much he got out of the graph even after a glance or two. Once I understood them more, I realized there are actually some really interesting results. For my project I was assigned to write the abstract of a research report. This is just a little blurb at the beginning of the report that gives an overview of the entire project. At first glance you think that is a simple task. I'm sorry to say but you are very very wrong. To write a simplified version of anything you first need to understand the nitty-gritty details of it and boy are there a lot of details. I spent all morning refining and changing and re doing and correcting my draft. After a few hours I was fairly proud of what I had finished. I sent it to the other people working on the study for edits so I will see how I did when I get those back.
I'm really trying to take everything in. It just hit me that tomorrow is my last day and I'm really sad about it. I went for a walk with my friend Adriana to go pick up her snowboard boots that had broken. I tried took in all my surrounding and was able to appreciate Vail. It's actually quite a lovely little town. Wow, today I had a lot of time to catch up on some non-work related things. Although it was a little painfully boring I was able to look at colleges, catch up on some emails. I could have done some homework, but I simply did not have the motivation to do so -- oops maybe tomorrow. In the afternoon, fellows from Stryker came to the SPRI to do a hip and shoulder scope lab. Stryker manufactures and develops surgical devices and equipment. Today they brought a super cool new anchor in which the surgeon does not have to tie the knot when they are preforming things like labrum repairs or many other common surgical practices. The lab ended up being really really cool. There were two labrum repair hip scopes, one knee dissection, and one shoulder scope all happening at the same time. It was awesome to be able to walk around to all the different stations and ask questions and learn a ton about the individual procedures. Since the hips and shoulder were endoscopic surgeries, which aren't all that thrilling to watch, I spent most of my time with Marco on the knee dissection. I was impressed by how much "stuff" can come off of one knee. I thought about posting a picture but I decided to save you all the misery of seeing it. I was a little grossed out in the beginning, as I always am, but today, as I got more comfortable with it, I found some beauty in the old, blackened by oxygen, half dissected, cavdaveric knee. I found a certain elegance in the muscles. They have an impressive sleekness yet you can tell they are crazy strong. The red coloring is so pure while the fiberus white grains add a fiberus look.
Although not all the much happened today, I still had a nice day. Not much was happening early in the morning so i had some time to catch up on my blog and read about some of my classmate's experiences. People are sure doing cool things and also having very different experiences. I am excited to hear stories when we are all back together. After this, Adriana asked me if I could help her with some data analysis. It turned out to be pretty tedious but I didn't mind giving her a hand. It gave me the chance to listen to good music and do something fairly mindless for a while which was kind of a nice break. I was kind of amazed by how much work it took. I always thought you look get the data and then you come up with a conclusion, but it is much more complicated then that. Adriana told me it took her team days to figure out how to even start analyzing the data. When there are so many individual pieces of data it is hard to figure out how to organize it. I continued this for a while and Adriana was nice enough to grab me some lunch (one of the better sandwiches ever) as a thank you for helping her out. The process would have taken her the whole day without my help. After I ate, I went into the lab to help with a hip project that Christiano and Matt were working on. They are doing an anatomic study on a tissue that is inside of the hip joint that connects the head (of the femur) to the acetabulum (the cup). People have never really paid attention to this tissue, assuming that it really didn't have much of a function. Now surgeons are theorizing that it may be the reason many people have hip pain without a known source. For decades, when doctors have fixed common hip problems like FAI (Femoral Acetabular Impingement (a bump on the head that hits the acetabulum)) they have also had to rip the LT tissue in the joint to fix the FAI. Christiano and Matt's study will give surgeons more of an idea of what the LT does. They were again using the Roamer to collect coordinates and then analyzing the 3D representation of it on the computer. I was really cool to watch this image be created and to be able to play around with the finished image.
I am utterly astonished by how fast this week went. What? Where did you go?! Good thing I have been blogging or it would have been a struggle trying to recall everything that I have done. It's such a blur but a wonderful blur nonetheless.
Here are my thoughts: 1. It was really cool to work with lots of different people in lots of different areas. There's always so much going on and so much to learn. My head is overflowing with new knowledge and new questions that this week has presented and I am exhausted. 2. A long night sleep would do me good. 3. I am a little melancholy right now. All the sudden I am realizing how short a time I have left at SPRI. This is a sad thing. I don't want to leave. If they offered me a job I would take it and stay here forever doing cool things. 4. I am a little worried for when I go back to school. I think my motivation to do high school work is going to be at an all-time low. Doing ground breaking research is quite addicting and such real stuff. Although solving differential equations and learning about the history of Native Americans are important subjects, they do not completely compare to my experience in the past two weeks. 5. Coming to a place like SPRI has allowed me to have a goal for where I would like to reach later in life. I think it is easier to stay motivated when you have a legit goal you are trying to reach. When people major in college, they are obviously interested in the subject but I feel like lots of people don't have a direct vision that is guiding them. I am thankful that my experience has given me something to strive for in the future. 6. I really like working with people that are happy to be where they are. This is definitely a goal for me later in life. I think the entire flow of a work place can be controlled by the attitude of the employees. Everyone here is stoked to be doing what they are doing and as a result, they accomplish A LOT and have fun while doing it. 7. I have heard there are summer opportunities here so I am definitely going to ask and see if anything would be possible for me this summer. I would love to come back here and do more research. Since I already know the lay of the land, I could jump right into projects and maybe play a bigger role in some of them. 8. I really don't want to leave this place, these people, or this town. They really do have a wonderful thing going. 9. I am so lucky to be here. 10. That being said, I am open minded about leaving Vail and returning to Durango. It is a astonishingly wonderful place and I am so thankful to call it home. Today I took a day off of work to head up to Fort Collins. My dad has been in Denver all week for a work conference so we cruised on up to CSU for a little tour. I had heard about their unique biomedical engineering (BME) program a few times so my dad suggested we go check it out. This experience turned out to be very different from other times I have looked at college's programs. This time I already knew where the degree could take me instead of wondering what the end result of the degree would be. SPRI has given me tons of insight on what is possible in this field so I was able to look at CSU's program and ask myself if I think it would prepare me for a job like one at SPRI. They actually have really cool program where students double major in BME and a another form of engineering over a span of five years. The dual education is exactly what people at SPRI have been recommending for me so that was cool to know the opportunity is out there. I think the program is really awesome and it would prepare me for the field, that said it would be five years of super hard work. The dual major definitely makes it much more intensive. I enjoyed talking to students who are currently in the program and also getting to see all the labs and facilities specifically built for the program. I also liked viewing this program in a backward sense, already having work experience in the field. Although I did not realize it until now, SPRI is definitely teaching me what I would like to get out of my undergrad experience.
Today was actually so cool. We started the testing of the knee study. I am super excited to be doing my project on it because of how cool it actually is. It is really cool to see everyone come together and for this study. Everyone is doing different tasks but all with the same goal of completing the study. Matt and Mary (engineers) set up, programmed, and controlled the robot. Marco (fellow) prepped the knee and made the initial incisions. Brady (research engineer) set up the knee and the robot and took coordinate points, and David (research) prepared tendons for insertion in the knee. I was able to help out everyone out in their different areas. Marco was awesome and let me help him with the incisions. I helped him cut and then also suture the incisions closed. He taught me some surgical techniques which was really cool but also quite challenging. I helped Brady actually get the specimen set up which proved to be quite the puzzle because its orientation with the robot had to be correct. After that, David was nice enough to offer to teach me how to suture on my own. I turned out to be pretty hard but also super cool. I got to suture a piece of an achilles tendon which is actually a really beautiful thing.
My mentor is out of town for the week so I have found I need to seek out opportunities a little more than usual. There really wasn't all that much happening this morning, but I eventually found Matt and Mary in the lab. They were testing a hip with the KUKA robot that I worked with the first week. I was able to help them record coordinates in a similar process to what I watched yesterday with the foot specimen. Matt consumed an obscene amount of coffee this morning which was making his hands super shaky so getting accurate points was a slight struggle. After a while, we ended up getting stuck on a problem that no one had an answer for. We all just sat there for upwards of 15 minutes- fairly dumbfounded. We ended up not being able to fix the problem. The question of if we could even use this data for the study came up. Research is cool, it' s just a big old problem solving exercise. After a fairly lonely lunch I headed back down to the lab to watch two of the international fellows, Marco (from Italy) and Francisco (from Brazil), prepare a knee for testing tomorrow. They had to harvest a graft and also drill tunnels for a tendon to be inserted into. It was really interesting to see the process and watch them figure it out themselves. Marco and Francisco ended up planning a dinner party during the preparation. It was quite amusing to listen to. After this, Marco prepared the tendon that would be inserted. He had to suture it so that it was the right length and size. Holding a human tendon is pretty cool. It is so simple and smooth and sleek. I tried to figure out some more details of the testing, but communication with the international fellows is always a little difficult. Their English is not wonderful and my accent deciphering skills are definitely below par. I think i will be able to understand more during testing tomorrow. I am really looking forward to getting started on this study! The sutured tendon
This morning was super cool. I was able to shadow the testing of a foot ligament study. Simply put, the study aims to define how a group of ligaments in the foot affect the stabilization and position of the tibia and fibula by testing internal rotation, external rotation, and compression strength. A similar study was done in the 60s, but was rashly executed. Because it is the only study of its kind, doctors have been quoting it for decades. Some of the SPRI researchers decided it was time to re-do the study more accurately and with updated technology. To do this they are using a machine called the Instron that is able to push, pull, and rotate a specimen. The team drilled coordinate plates into the tibia and fibula of each foot specimen and is now in the process of recording the coordinates at different rotations and applied forces. They use a tool called the Roamer that records the 3D coordinates of an object in space. After the initial test of the intact foot, the team cuts a ligament and retests with the same amount of rotation and force. I have never been in this kind of environment so it was really interesting to see how the whole process works. As I expected It was very structured and collaborative. What I didn't expect was how much problem solving is involved. I never realized that there are no rules that say how to conduct research. That is what is so cool about it. It is something no one has ever done so the problems must be tackled as they come. Gosh, it's actually so cool. The lack of guidelines leave an infinite amount of space for discovery. The afternoon turned out to be pretty darn slow so I did some research and listened to good music. I am still amazed by how awesome the people here are. They make my days brighter without a doubt. Tomorrow I am looking forward to getting started on my LINK project with some pilot testing. Wee! This is what the testing area loos like. Adriana (left) is helping Brady(middle) collect coordinates. The Roamer (the white tool sitting on the table) sends coordinates to the computer to create a 3D image of the points in space. You can see the foot specimen just past the Roamer. Travis (right) is the engineer on the project and it is his job to control the Instron (big grey box-like machine in the back) .
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