Week 7 -Zuzanna

This week I went to clinic and saw a couple of patients, mainly some people in remission, so it was nice to see how happy they were and some discussed how much cancer changed their outlook on life. I also saw a few brain surgeries, specifically with the removal of tumors. I saw the endoscopic removal of of a brain tumor through the nose, in which they drill through all the cartilage in the nostrils and go up in to quite quickly pull out the tumor. I also saw an open brain surgery, in which they removed part of the skull and took out the tumor from the brain. I thought the tumor would be removed as an entire tumor, like in previous surgeries I saw in breast or kidney cases, but here they actually dug out pieces of it as it was so big and difficult to separate from the vasculature easily within the brain. The patient will still need further types of therapy as they are unable to easily and definitely remove all of the tumor here and just confirm removal through pathological analysis, since it is more sensitive to remove excess brain tissue on edges of a tumor, compared to the other tissues. I learned a lot about the variety of approaches in treating and removing these tumors through watching the different tissue type cases, and it is very applicable to understanding my research area.