I work with Dr. Susan Gauthier in Neurology and her specialty is in dealing with multiple sclerosis patients. Since immersion term started, we have looked at multiple examples of brain MRIs containing legions, and I thought it would be interesting to get a chance to learn how to operate an MRI machine as well as participate as a test subject in an MRI based study. Thanks to Dr. Prince and one of our peers working with him, Zhe, a few of us had the opportunity to do this. Greg, Chris, and I met with Zhe and one of Dr. Prince's current graduate students, Alexi. We discussed the process required for taking MRIs of patients and the amount of paperwork generally involved. It was interesting to be on the other side of the table (patient) being studied rather than the one doing the study (researcher). In my excitement to get started, I started to skim through the documents only to find myself actually reading in detail all the specifics and being concerned about what would happen with my brain scans later and what some of the terms and conditions actually meant. That was when I realized that getting test subjects for studies could in fact sometimes be difficult especially if the patient has to undergo further testing and prolonged exposure to a specific drug therapy.
Alexi took a standard set of scans that is typical of those taken for patients with MS. Although the longest scan period was no more than 5 minutes, and I was only in the scanner for a total of nearly 10 minutes, it felt much longer. I can not imagine being in the scanner for an hour or more at a time as is required for doing some lesion enhancement studies for MS patients. In the process of doing a scan of Greg's brain and abdominal regions, Dr. Prince came by to see how things were going and for starters, it was confirmed that I HAVE A BRAIN! He said it was a young, healthy, normal brain so I was fairly relieved as Dr. Prince went through the anatomy of my brain and spewed off names of important regions in different image slices. For a while, I was actually concerned something wrong would appear in the MRI so you can imagine what a relief that was! I recommend that when you do get your shot at playing around with the MRI machine that you ask to actually take the scans yourselves. No need to read through Dr. Prince's online book in advance (might be useful to skim and get a sense for what you will be doing, though), but be sure to work through Chapter 1 with the phantom object as a group and then Chapter 4 with one of your peer's brain. Anyway, below are slices of my brain for any of you doubters.
Back to working with MS patients in the clinic! I have been attending clinical rounds with Dr. Gauthier and watching as she interacts with many of her regular patients. It is interesting the level of loss of function seen in patients of all ages. In particular, a 37 year old patient and her mother stood out to me. Mostly the interaction between the mother and the daughter really threw me for a loop. The mom insisted that Dr. Gautheir was depriving them of a stronger medication that would essentially allow her daughter to start walking again not understanding that it was physically impossible for her to regain that lost strength in her legs in order to even support weight. The daughter understood and seemed content working on small things; she had accepted the fact that she was now trying to maintain current motor functions rather than attempt to regain loss of function. The mother kept insisting that Dr. Gauthier was for some reason not giving her daughter the strongest form of drug therapy that would help her daughter recover and demanded that she try radiation therapy (I am still unclear how that would help at all with preventing myelin degeneration) but after confirming that things seemed stable and that the patients condition had not worsened over the course of the past year, Dr. Gauthier was firm in her decision to have the patient remain on the current drug therapy.
Clinical observations aside, research has been progressing along. I've had multiple meetings with physicians and researchers throughout the medical campus that collaborate with Dr. Gauthier on a regular basis, and I am blown away by how well she seems to manage meeting after meeting on top of her responsibilities to her patients as a physician. Sometimes I wonder when she actually has time to do research between all the meetings, clinic duties, and hospital rounds not to mention having a kid and husband to go home to! It's been great exposure for me to see a clinical researcher in action. I am still contemplating going down that path eventually, but for the time being, I'll be content if I can manage one thing at a time at this stage in my life.
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