Week 5:
Baylor College of Medicine

July 7, 2014

This week will be very exciting because the study will officially start.

June 23th, 2014
Pigs came at 10:30 AM. Dan and Agus brought the pigs from the van. Dan and Rose weighed, checked their sex, and ear tagged them from 101-120. Agus and I put each in a cage while Hanh mixed Soweena milk (4 oz. of Soweena powder + 4L of tap water, blend on low for 30s); I started to put Soweena for them. Holding the piglets the first time was scary, because they don’t have lots of hair and it felt very weird holding something without hair. I got used to it though. Pig 20 was Dan’s and my favorite because he was so fussy and he just loved people! 
Surgery will start tomorrow at 7:30 AM.

June 24, 2014
Surgery day was absolutely a long day for everyone. Everyone showed up around 7:00 AM and surgery started at 7:30 AM. Each surgery took about 35 minutes. Dan and Hanh operated all 10 surgeries. Rodrigo was assisting Hanh and watching her. Rose recorded the weight, calculated the amount of Batryl, and wrapped them up after surgery along with Andriana. Agus and I were bringing piglets in and back to their cage. I also helped Rose with wrapping them up, helping Agus in anesthetizing them.

As some pigs were bigger (2000g or more) started to wake up right after the surgery. So, we had to increase isoflorene dose to 5 and then stayed at 3 instead of 2.

I got to inject Batryl to 2 pigs. One of them got a bruise from my injection so I had to tell Rodrigo to check on him when feeding him at 7:00 PM later. I feed the piglets in Group B (GB) again at 2:30 and 20mL for piglets in Group B (GA) which already had surgery in a bowl. They were hungry! They drank all the milk within 5 minutes.

Everyone got done around 2:45 PM. We had to move all the equipment to a small surgery room because there will be a group before us tomorrow for C section on a sow. Everyone left around 3:30 PM.
June 25, 2014
Today was the surgery day for group B. I got to the lab at 8:00 AM even though our surgery did not start until 10:30 AM because I wanted to see how Dr. Duck Handerson delivered the preterm piglets. They were so small! The smallest was 400g and biggest was 900kg. He has 12 of them.

When I came in, Dan, Agus, and Rodrigo were already there to delivered 50% of the diet to group A via catheter. At 11:30 AM, Rodrigo showed me the step by step procedure to feed them and how to ensure they get the full volume by injecting 10mL of warm water. After that, I had to flush the feeding bags with warm water, draining water into the sink to ensure milk will not get rotten inside the tube.

I injected three more piglets today with Batryl nd assisting with anesthesia.

What I really learned during this past week about experimental design was that no matter how careful the experiment was designed, if the whole team did not adhere to the protocol, inconsistency would be introduced and thus ruined the result. For instance, preventing the piglets from having diarrhea has been one of the top priorities because if one has diarrhea, its protein synthesis rate would be altered. So making sure no left over milk in the bag, tubes…etc. was hard and time consuming; making everyone to put in the same effort into keeping it clean was even harder.

June 28th, 2014
I went into the lab twice today: 10:30 AM and 7:30 PM.

At 10:30 AM, I met Dr. A from Yale University. He was working with the shrews. He explained to Andriana and I about his work on measuring the CO2 amount that a shrew produces as the byproduct of Kreb Cycles. Measuring CO2 was the indirect measurement of energy produced. All of the shrews were lack of surcease. He asked me multiple questions about Kreb Cycle: what was the by product? If CO2was the byproduct , what was the main product of Kreb Cycle? He emphasized on using linear thinking and organizing my knowledge, which I think was definitely essential. Thanks to the Introduction course in Biology and Cell and Molecular Biology, I was able to answer those questions!

I asked him if the facility on 3rd floor was used to measure two indirect measurements: CO2 and O2 (I was able to answer this question!), physician can measure the metabolize rate of the patient. Also, the direct measurement should measure energy, and one form of energy we can measure was HEAT! Again, this point was emphasized throughout the biology and chemistry courses I have taken at Cornell.

My volunteer shift today at TCH was different. I was not calling patients but sitting with Xanvier, a 12 year old boy. He had curly, brown hair and deep brown eyes. His body was covered with bruises and he was transferred from Ben Taub Hospital. I was not entirely sure about his condition because the doctor or nurse did not explain it to me. I had a good time playing with him. I mimicked the puppet, I showed him how to mix colors. I let him told me which colors he want to mix. We mixed red and blue, green and yellow, blue and green. The little boy has a great imagination. I also made PBJ sandwich for him but I let him give me instruction such as spread the peanut butter on the bread. He said that I was like painting a door with peanut butter! So I let him close the two doors (peanut butter door and jelly door) together.

He was brave. They injected a 25 needle to get 2 full 10cc syringes. He did not cry. When I am about to leave, he let me pat his head so he could fall as sleep. I did not want to leave him but I had to go into the lab again.

I have been thinking over and over again if I want to take the long path of becoming an MD/PhD in pediatrics. There was time I doubt it, but every time I pass by TCH, looking at the children waiting outside one of the best hospital in the States, I wondered about my niece drinking milk from a dog, about 358 children waiting for one doctor in my country, in Africa, and in South America. I wonder when they will have these kinds of top treatment. When will we, the healthcare providers, be able to bring equality to every single child on Earth?

And when I pat Xanvier’s head, the passion of doing something for the children to ensure each of them have the chance to live healthy kindles.