Emma Berwanger: Prytime Medical, Week one

Hey everyone! My name is Emma Berwanger and I’m going to be an upcoming senior at Ridgway High School. I’m currently on an internship for Prytime Medical. They have created this device called the REBOA, which is a catheter that is placed up the femoral artery, up into the aorta, to stop a hemorrhage in a variety of cases.

I was on the road by 3 am on Saturday morning, and my dad and I drove 14 hours all the way to San Angelo. We stayed the night there, and made our way down for another 3 hours to Boerne, Texas. There we met Mr. and Mrs. Spencer, who were kind enough to let me stay at their house for the internship. I met Mathew, Steven, and Sam, who were my new brothers for the next three weeks. My hair doubled in size due to the humidity, but can I add I kinda like the heat? and humidity? Weird, never thought I would like Texas.

Monday

When Mr. Spencer and I got to the office, we looked at some of the stories in which the ER- REBOA had saved peoples lives. He gave me a little anatomy lesson, we looked at a life-sized aorta, and we briefly looked at how the REBOA works. I sat in on the morning team huddle in which everyone in the company has a Zoom call and explains their top priority for the day, any news they have, and any problems that they need help solving. I then got set up in my office (which I’m stealing from my boss for the next week while she is on vacation), and started some of the training. The training is reading a bunch of documents per the FDA because I’m working with a medical device company.

Tuesday

I started with huddle and then got to work in the lab! We were testing the training equipment that will be sent to hospitals that order the REBOA device, and we did that for about 5 hours. I worked with a college intern named Mason, and we were going through the instruction from the first model and updating everything to the second model. I then got to put together and take apart the dummy, as well as insert a REBOA into him (or her). Mason and I then marked up the existing document and sent it out to the team for peer edits.

That night I forced all of my “intern brothers” to get in the pool and we played “poolsketball” (basketball in the pool) and zip lined into the pool at least 20 times.

Wednesday

The day started off by trying Mary’s Taco’s for the first time. I guess the thing in Texas is breakfast tacos rather than breakfast burritos, and let me tell you they were amazing. Today was spent on doing one more of the tests on our dummy, and running the final test to make sure our directions were accurate (which they weren’t, so more changes to come!). I watched someone fulfill an order to a hospital, and then I fulfilled my own. So now there is my name on a REBOA package going to some hospital, which is pretty exciting. I sat in on a meeting with another intern, and listened to the UT-Austin intern presentations.

Thursday

Huddle was the first thing, and then I spent an hour on the phone with a lady from California to figure out how to transfer 12,000 contacts from Outlook into a software called Insightly. We finally figured it out after at least 10 fails, but it was very rewarding to figure out. I sent out tons of emails to try and get into contact with journalists that had written about our device and to try and get into contact with more patients. I then helped my “intern-mom” clean up the office after work, went on a run after it started to cool down, and read some of my new book before bed.

Friday

Friday was started with huddle, and then Mason and I immediately went into the lab to start filming an information video. This video is going to show the set up of the STAAR simulator, so we spent the whole morning shooting, placing backdrops, running a simulation, and making more corrections to our document.

Lunch came around, and we edited our document. As I checked my email, I realized I had gotten an email back from one of the journalists. It came with the contact information for one of the patients and said she would be willing to update me on her life. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten so excited over an email. The rest of my afternoon was spent sorting through contacts and finishing up the video clips.

The Weekend

After a long week, I decided shopping would be the best way to rejuvenate myself. Steven and Matthew took me to the big shopping mall in San Antonio, and I would like to publicly thank them for shopping with me, because we stayed there for 5 hours and they didn’t complain once! Sunday we all went to Fiesta Texas, which is an amusement park. There were no lines for any of the rides because you have to reserve to go in advance and there can only be a certain amount of people in the park. Due to the fact that we rode 5 big roller coasters in a row, I then got motion sickness and took 4 Dramamine throughout the day. I fell asleep at 7 and slept til 7 the next day.