What a great last week at my internship. I shadowed lots of patients and continued to learn more at Emory.
At the start of the week, I was back at the ENT. This week I learned about the audiogram which tests people’s hearing. They send different decibels of sound through each ear and see where they can hear. Around ten decibels is where the normal working ear can hear. One patient could hear from the bone but not in the ear. This showed us his hearing was not caused by nerve damage and could be fixed by surgery (conventional). If a person cannot hear at all, bone or not, it is caused by nerve and the only way to fix it is through hearing aids. I also spent time with the allergen specialist who tests patients on forty-eight different things common to the southeast. If someone is allergic to something, red bumps will rise on their skin. They then have the option to under go immunotherapy. This works by injecting small amounts of what they are allergic to into their body. Over time they become accustomed to what they are allergic to. This week while shadowing we also looked at lots of CT scans. These showed the different sinuses and how the drainage pathways are very small and coated with mucus membranes. If there are any sort of bacteria, these membranes release mucus and swell. There is almost an immediate reaction of pain because the drainage pathways are so small. This week I had the opportunity to talk to the doctors I was shadowing about why they chose to do what they do. Dr. French explained to me that he always wanted to be a doctor, but did not want to commit to the schedule of a surgeon of another specialty, as they often spend long days away from family doing surgeries back to back. With this in mind, he chose to be an ENT doctor, which enables him to see something wrong, and fix it for his patient, while also being able to live a life outside the hospital. He brought up lots of great points for me to think about at my last day at the ENT.
At Emory this week (Chalkboard), there was lots going on as the undergrads are beginning to prepare for their presentations on their projects. By watching them prepare, I had the opportunity to better understand what each of the girls projects are actually looking at. They explained to me the function of the kidney, as blood is pumped through your body, it is pumped through your kidney where it is filtered before going to the rest of your body. In the kidney, the ultimate goal is to keep a state of homeostasis in the body by taking out whatever is not needed. My team is specifically looking at sodium reabsorption in the body. Hayley described to me how scientists find A and Z, and then try to find the parts in-between. In this case, this lab found out IL6 is involved in sodium reabsorption and now Hayley is looking specifically at the pathway used. I really enjoyed looking deeper into what this team is working on and the bigger picture of it all this week.
In conclusion, I am so thankful for this opportunity and ability to do these internships this summer. Thank you to Chalkboard and Pinhead for setting these up, I had the most amazing time!
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