The end of time (Jason Guss)

So my last week of summer immersion unfortunately had to end a few days early. I left Wednesday night after our last group meeting. This week was not too exciting overall. I shadowed my mentor some in the office and everything seemed pretty normal regarding the cases. The best part of my week was the Da Vinci surgery I was able to see on Wednesday before I left for Ithaca. Dr. Scherr was nice enough to let me shadow his prostatectomy. I was lucky enough to find a medical student in the room and he guided me through the whole procedure step by step which helped my understanding out so much. The Da Vinci robot was extremely impressive and watching the doctors in the control system machine really was like something out of Star Trek or the movies.  I learned that the arms of the robot have 4 degrees of freedom (more than the hand) and so this allows for delicate maneuvers to be made inside the patient. It really is an impressive feat of engineering that this Da Vinci robot represents and I can't imagine the amount of effort that goes into developing that. I also was able to watch the next surgery where they took a piece of the illeum of the patient and made this into a bladder for them.  It boggles the mind what they can do in the operating room and how the body can recover from it.  I am going to miss this immersion program and really feel like I have got a lot out of it. Before this program I had no idea what happen in the operating room, how many people are in there, what each persons role is, and now I feel as if I could explain this to others.  This unique opportunity will definitely influence my medical related decisions in the future, whether they are academic or personal.