Week 4: Peter

 This week has been pretty interesting. At the lab meeting for Dr. Roth's group on Monday, I got some further context for projects in the lab and got the ball rolling with the histology images. On Tuesday, Adam invited me to a surgery that Dr. Spector was working on. The patient had a squamous cell carcinoma that implicated a large portion of their lower jaw bone. Using some cool 3D printed titanium cutting guides, the plan was to take the patients fibula and reconstruct a jawbone. One thing that really surprised me is that they can just remove the midsection of the fibula, and without adding any extra hardware, the patient will be able to walk fairly normally. To ensure a speedy operation, Dr. Kutler, an ENT surgeon, was going to handle the removal of the jaw while Dr. Spector's team handled the fibula. However as he was working, he found the tumor involved the tongue so an oral surgeon was called in to assist in the total glossectomy. At this point, there were about 20 people in the room with about 15 of them being scrubbed in and actively working on the patient. By the time I left, they had the leg mostly patched back up and had finished the microsurgery in the jaw to reconnect the blood vessels. Overall, it made for a fascinating first surgery to observe. On Wednesday, I was able to zoom into the Hepatobiliary tumor board. While some of the details were definitely going over my head, it was cool to see the discussions between the doctors regarding each patient. I also was provide support for the injection of mice with cytotoxic T lymphocytes and getting the ears labeled on another batch of mice. On Thursday I saw the tumor injections into the mice that had their ears clipped the day prior. Assuming my cells behave, we will be doing flow next week. I'm also working on putting together a rough draft of the histology data to show at lab meeting.