Day 1 at the Carolina Ear and Hearing Clinic was already a restless one… Dr. John McElveen had over 40 patients to attend to, and we were at his side in the examination rooms the entire time! When Jonathan and I arrived to the clinic at 8:00 AM we were first suited up with lab coats so that we at least looked the part of doctors (even though we didn’t fully understand all of Dr. McElveen’s medical jargon). The morning started with a staff meeting that we sat in on where the upcoming month pertaining to all of Dr. McElveen’s surgeries was discussed (mostly at least… an engagement was also announced during the meeting which provided some well-needed excitement to wake everybody up on an early Monday!). After the meeting, Dr. McElveen had to rush to get on a conference call, so some of his nurses took Jonathan and me on a tour of the office and let us sit in on some of the hearing tests performed by the audiologists. The audiologists were very good at explaining what they were doing as they went along, and what all of their charts indicated in the patient’s file. After Dr. McElveen’s conference call had ended, he pulled us out from the hearing test rooms as it was time for him to begin examining patients. We hopped from room to room as Dr. McElveen examined the patients’ ears. Conveniently, on his magnifying device that he looked into to see the ear canal better was a camera that displayed and enlarged Dr. McElveen’s procedure on a television screen. Most of the times it was really cool to be able to see real-time footage of Dr. McElveen scanning the ear with his instruments (he was very good with pointing out certain things in the ear to explain stuff to us as he went along); however, some of the times it was kind of gross, like when he removed all of a patient’s ear wax or scraped away their dried-up ear fluid. The worst was when he used a suction tool to suck up all of the patient’s pus-like ear fluid. Jonathan and I stood there staring at the screen pretending to be professional and unfazed by the nauseating pus-fluid, but we later admitted to each other that we were both repulsed by it. After seeing all of these repulsive and gross bodily substances, it was time for our lunch break… perfect! Despite this, lunch was actually really enjoyable because we became much more acquainted with Dr. McElveen’s staff who is a really fun group of people. After our lunch break, Dr. McElveen had Jonathan and me research some common medical procedures and terms such as cochlear implants and otosclerosis. One of the nurses then explained to us how some of the advanced hearing aids worked and how to custom-program them to meet a specific patient’s needs. After this, we rejoined Dr. McElveen and continued shadowing him in the examination rooms until the office day was over at 5:00. Although Jonathan and I complained to each other throughout the day about standing up for too long without sitting (it’s actually a pretty challenging task that we are not accustomed to doing on a daily basis), we have absolutely nothing to complain about regarding our day as a whole, or the Carolina Ear and Hearing Clinic. It was truly an amazing and informative day, and we cannot wait to shadow Dr. McElveen in the operating room tomorrow during a surgical procedure! – Kiran W.