What do you call a doctor who doesn't like doing botox? Unenthusi-plastic

Forget all you've seen on TV. Forget Scrubs, Grey's Anatomy, House, ER, and General Hospital. This is New York Presbyterian. And it's about to get REAL

Monday: I spent the morning observing Dr. Spector's office hours, and it was littered with a variety of cases. Never regenerations, skin grafts, hernia repairs. The most interesting case was a woman in her 20's who had developed bilateral compartment syndrome a year prior. Her surgery to repair was successful, but one of her scars had swelled and had some pain. This was my first scar revision consultation, and it was interesting to learn about how Plastics approaches wound care and scar formation as opposed to general surgery. The afternoon I spent in lab.

Tuesday: The morning I followed rounds in the Medical ICU with Dr. Berlin. This was my first opportunity in the MICU, and it was fascinating. Dr. Berlin was using it as an excellent opportunity to teach the new set of Residents on the floor. He covered topics such as proper patient release protocol, using programs such as Up-to-Date and MicromedX in the clinical setting, and peppered the young doctor's with leading questions to help them reach diagnoses on their own. It was very cool to see the mentorship aspect of medicine in action. The afternoon was spent in surgery. A patient had previously had tumors removed from his mouth and was subject to radiation. His previous skin graft to the mouth wound did not take, so the ENT team entered and removed the old graft and part of the patient's tongue to make room in the mouth for a new one. After determining that the tissue under the graft was still usable, Dr. Spector and his team performed a new graft. The patient was lucky; there was a chance that the radiation had caused too much damage to the underlying tissue, in which case a full flap transfer would have had to be performed, a significantly more invasive surgery. 

Wednesday: In the morning I was in lab and created new sets of scaffolds. These came out well and current histology is positive. The afternoon was spent mostly in the Immersion meeting. Good call on the sandwiches.

Thursday: Another round of office hours. Not too much to cover. I did get to observe a woman receive facial dermal fillers. It is amazing how expensive that procedure is. I also observed a patient having a presurgical meeting where it was determined he would need a free fibula flap transfer to repair his chin. He has a significant tumor attached to the middle of his lower jaw, and when it is removed he will require at least one and possible bilateral transfers to perform the reconstruction. Watching the way the procedure and following recovery was explained to the patient was interesting. The doctors need to be honest with the patient, but it is hard to be honest without terrifying them. This is a complex and invasive procedure, but the patient seemed ready for the challenge. The afternoon was lab meetings. I had the excellent opportunity to sit in on a presentation by Dr. Ennio Tasciotti out of Houston Methodist. His lab is performing some cutting edge work in tissue engineering and drug delivery, and he is interested Cornell's collaborative system that connects the medical school with the greater university. As a member of the collaboration, it was great to see other scientists to interested in what we have here.

Friday: A slow Friday. I worked on some things in lab and some stuff for back up in Ithaca, but otherwise it was a pretty relaxed day. Another week down.