Week 1:
The Adventure Begins

June 15, 2018

Picture this: Ten bright-eyed and eager interns sitting in the atrium of a busy and huge hospital anxiously waiting for the intern coordinators to show up. It’s 9 am and everyone seems to be here but the people in charge. At 9:10 someone who everyone remembers from their interviews is here and the interns congregate to the point of contact, it’s awkward but at least someone knows what they’re doing. This is how I started my internship at the Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora. Lucky for me this awkward beginning brought me close to my fellow interns and helped me to calm my nerves.

It has been quite the week here in Aurora. The first thing I have learned is that the Children’s Hospital is huge. If you were to stack three Cornell campuses on top of each other that’s how big this hospital is not to mention it being connected to the medical school and medical school hospital, which makes it quite intimidating and overwhelming. My first day was spent being a duckling following a mom as I toured the hospital and got all my badging done. The only way to get full access to the hospital is with this nifty little badge which is my lifeline this summer.

This week involved so many cool opportunities. I went to a poster session on campus which had all subjects from pediatric oncology studies to critical care research. There was even an award-winning poster from the gait lab being presented, there are so many research projects going on at the hospital. I also had meetings every day this week. In addition to the poster session, I was able to go to Amputee Clinic. This is a clinic where all the orthopedic providers come to see a few patients and make decisions on what their next step should be for treatment. It was so exciting to see the providers at work and being able to interact with patients. I was also able to meet my PI (primary investigator), Dr. De and orthopedic surgeon, and RA (research assistant), Alex. We talked about my project and this began my week of literature searches and chart reviews.

My project is based on the surgery side of the Gait Analysis and Movement Center. I will be looking at children with Cerebral Palsy who presented with a crouch gait. A crouch gait is when a child cannot fully extend their knees, so they are always in a slightly bent position which can lead to knee, leg, and back problems. I will be looking at children who have has a distal femoral extension surgery, DFEO, and/or patellar tendon advancement, PTA, to assess outcomes and see if there are markers in x-rays we can use to determine a surgical action earlier. This is where the literature searches and chart reviews come into play to help me truly understand what is going on. A DFEO is where the surgeon takes a wedge of bone from the femur and places hardware in to aid growth, this wedge shortens the femur, so the child can extend their knee fully. A PTA is done when the knee shifts up the leg from being in a crouch position for so long. The surgeon shortens the tendon on the patella to put it back in place. These surgeries are more commonly being seen together, so this summer I will look at them separately and together.

Of course, a first week cannot be complete without a hiccup or two. Because I am not on the payroll I was not given a UC Denver account which made for a big hiccup. The program I am using for my project requires a UC Denver account to log in, this means after many emails and calls to IT I had to figure out how to get an account or there would be no research done from me this summer. Thankfully, Friday before I left I was able to set up an account which means Monday I will be going full force on my project and entering data.

I am home in Colorado Springs for the weekend and cannot see what the next week brings!