Today was the day. We woke up ready to seize it. Ready to finally embrace our destiny. We slowly tied our boots and prepared for what was coming. We didn’t know what it would be but we knew it would be good; we knew we would be ready. We ate a breakfast of champions: pancakes and a banana. Now that I was fueled, I waited for Kirans arrival.

Robert, who was with us yesterday, picked us up for our full day at his office. Upon arrival, Robert gave us pedometers, and our mission was to test how accurate they are. We conducted numerous experiments to test the accuracy, some of which were walking on a treadmill for 5 minutes while someone counted and testing to see how many steps the person and Fitbit recorded. We concluded that the Fitbit was fairly close, it missed the amount of steps by around 100 or 150 which was close in our opinion for a 50 dollar fit bit.

All in all it was a wonderful experience and I couldn’t be luckier to have been chosen.

Today a girl from Cardinal Gibbons interned with us. We were back in Building 7, where we had started, and it was somewhat of a relief to be in a familiar setting. We were with a man named Dr. John Holloway, who had specialized in virtual reality.

Dr. Holloway loved his job, and was very enthusiastic to teach us all he knows. We spent the day in his office, listening to him explain the process of designing a virtual reality.
We ended up sitting in on a meeting with professors from the University of Northern Texas, some of the top scientists in his department. Dr. Holloway and his superior were very nervous to be speaking to them, because the boss of the professors actually founded a speciality in their department and he was apparently very famous.

It was our first day in RTI and the campus was extraordinary. Kiran and I got lost driving to the building, because the way RTI is set up is like a college campus. There are designated buildings for different departments and the campus is enormous. Once we found where we were supposed to be, after going through many different security gates, we managed to find who we were shadowing.
We began by shadowing a doctor who specialized in locating drugs in bake and DNA. They had complicated machines to find the drugs and described the process of it all. A lot of it involves chemistry and the doctors there had all majored in it. It was a fairly short day, because we had left at 12, but we got to tour the labs and the campus and had a great time doing that.

It was hard transitioning from the long weekend to another week of work, and it seemed to have taken a toll on the doctors too. The forensic doctors admitted to us that they were sluggish and moody and yearned for the weekend. But once everyone woke up they were enthusiastic about going back to work again, because everyone there loved their work.
Today we went down to a basement to discover even more labs. The lab that we worked on today, however, wasn’t exactly ideal. The doctors explained that sometimes you need to locate drugs in urine, and to do that they need a lab space to gather this urine. So Kiran and I spent the entire day pouring urine into a giant container to gather enough DNA to ship off to a different lab.

It’s the last day and we’re sad to be leaving, we had an incredible time here and we’re so grateful that all the doctors let us shadow them all day and follow them around.

Today I spent the day following around Nicole, and Kiran was with me this time. We had spent most of the time separated and doing separate checkups but this time we did all the checkups together. All the doctors knew that it was our last day and they wanted to celebrate by ordering pizza for lunch, so they told us not to pack a lunch today. I didn’t really get upset until we were all eating lunch together and I realized it was our last day with them and I had really gotten to like the doctors.

We worked more on patients in need of cochlear implants, and helped each patient regain their hearing and we saw how some of them had dealt with it. One woman, actually, hadn’t heard the chirp of a bird until she was 45 years old, which we found absolutely astonishing. She was 51 now and she heard so well and fluently.

Today picked up tempo quickly and suddenly. We began by meeting Dr. McElveen at Duke Hopsital, and had difficulty finding the entrance to the Same-Day Surgery building. We arrived 10 minutes early, so he hadn’t arrived yet and we were instructed to ask another nurse in the back about his whereabouts. Each nurse directed us further and further in the building and eventually we were in the middle of the building, surrounded by surgeries and doctors. Dr. McElveen laughed when he found us and led us through the labyrinth and towards the changing station. We put on scrubs and were thrown into a room where Dr. McElveen began surgery on a patient who suffered from damage towards the ear drum. I couldn’t quite tell whether or not it was cochlear implant surgery, but whatever it was was fascinating to me and Kiran. Ear surgery is far too cramped for me, it gives absolutely no room for error or else the patient could go deaf. All surgery is precise and requires steady hands, but there is nothing in accord with watching ear surgery. Dr. McElveen does the entire procedure under a microscope, which Kiran and I tried afterwards on a temporal bone. Carolina Ear & Hearing Clinic has one of the two temporal bone labs in the country, and Kiran and I were given the chance to mimic Dr. McElveen’s surgery procedure. We were given microscopes and tools to understand how difficult it is to do surgery under a microscope with such limited movement.

Afterwards Dr. McElveen had to go to South Carolina so Kiran and I were sent back to the hospital to resume our experience. We were assigned a paper on Stapedectomy’s and Otosclerosis, and we learned what the procedure is for dealing with it. Otosclerosis is the buildup of bone tissue in the outer ear around the stapes. This prevents the stapes from transmitting sound energy to the inner ear, causing the victim to suffer from either conductive or mixed hearing loss. Stapedetomy is the procedure done to continue the flow from the outer ear to the inner ear. The surgeon does an incision on the two arms of the stapes and cuts a whole in the stapedotomy which is a wall connected to the stapes. A piston-like object, called the prosthesis, is then connected to the incus is strung through the stapedotomy.

Dr. McElveen had to go to South Carolina for the rest of the week so Kiran and I split up and spent the rest of the day with separate doctors. I saw some interesting patients, some were impatient and curt white others were amiable. Nicolle, the doctor I was working with, knew all of the patients well because she’d spent so much time with them, and it was interesting seeing her interact with the ones she was fond of and the ones she wasn’t as fond of.

All in all I learned a lot about diseases in the ears and about how to deal with certain patients and how to be patient.

Day 1 was an enriching experience with Dr. McElveen and his numerous patients. When Kiran and I arrived, we were nervous entering the enormous, winding office that the doctors worked in. We began with a staff meeting, where Dr. McElveen and his associates organized everyone’s schedule for the month. The staff worked well as a group, they were quite supportive and the staff meeting was a great way to observe everyone interact. During the meeting they celebrated the engagement of Kate, an associate, and commemorated John-Thomas Junior for the graduation of his children. Finally, the meeting was over and everyone split up into their own work spaces in the winding and confusing office.

Next, Kate gave us a tour of the building and showed us where Kiran and I would set up our stuff for the week. We didn’t spend much time in there at all, though, we were often on our feet and participating in check-ups with patients. In fact, Kiran and I faced some adversity spending the entire day today on our feet, moving from room to room with Dr. McElveen and his patients and always standing in the corner, observing. It was fantastic listening to each patients story, every one of them had known Dr. McElveen personally, because he had worked with them for so many years.

We didn’t learn many logistical aspects of ear surgery or even the anatomy of the ear. We were taught that the ear consisted of three central bones, the malleus, the incus, and the stapes, but that was it for the most part. We watched Dr. McElveen remove a hearing aid from a patient under a microscope that was enhanced on a television screen in the corner, which was fascinating. Another patient was a young child who couldn’t work their hearing aid so that was interesting.

For the most part we focused on treating and handling patients today, and meeting the other doctors and learning about their individual specialties.