Week 7 & 8

Week 7 & 8. 

There’s only couple of days left. For the past few days, I thought I almost see every procedures and was a bit bored to repeated operations but the last two weeks gave me more experiences I expected. Dr. Milsom is an expert in laparoscopic procedure but I finally was able to see the open procedure. The patient admitted had extensively distended abdomen because of the stricture on the small intestine so he had to open her abdomen and got rid of the bad piece. I thought I fairly used to see the small intestine which I saw all the time in the mouse, but it was a bit more intimidating. It was easy to find the obstructed piece and it looked really horrible. The piece of loop of the small intestine was almost blocked by adhesion and hugely swollen. It looked like tied up with rubber band. I have pretty amazed by the fact that adhesion can do lots of bad things in the tissue although it is formed in normal healing process. In another case, he was admitted with huge pain in the abdomen. When we looked at his intestine, there was pretty stiff adhesion along with the small intestine and it made the small intestine tangled up. It was amazing that the swollen small intestine before the stricture was immediately returned to almost normal size once we released the adhesion. I keep realizing the thing that small thing can lead huge consequence, especially in bad way. That would be nice if there is simple drug that can inhibit excessive formation of adhesion after surgery or maybe some kind of biomaterial to prevent it. There was another impressive case of open procedure on Tuesday. That was a second time I saw him in the OR. I remember him because he had two stomas. He has been taken care of by the doctor but he was lying on the table to examine any blockage in his intestine with fluoscopy. As I wrote in previous report, his intestine was able to flow dyes smoothly from one end to the another. However, he came back to OR because he had been suffered from low quality of life. He said he couldn’t eat much although we didn’t find any obstruction so he finally decided to get another procedure. Dr. Milsom opened his abdomen and fixed stricture by strictureplasty near the first ileostomy and closed jejunostomy and rejoining separated piece. It was pretty long and hard. 

During summer immersion, I have got lots of fresh thought in mind. Especially, I think this time is so valuable since I could learn how other people have different interest and perspectives. I truly thank that I was able to work with Dr. Milsom who has active work on both clinics and research sides. I started my Ph.D to help people as a scientist but it is sometimes motivated by intellectual inquiry, which often does not have direct impact (or more say short-term effect) on patients. He kept encouraging me to develop something useful and helpful device,, thinking me what could be a real help to the world. It has been so precious time to be close to the real field and exposed to so much interesting things. By wrapping up my time here, I think I can say that my summer was fully immersed!