Week 9:
Finishing at Mayo

August 6, 2022

Looking back at my first week at Mayo, I am in awe at how differently I feel about the experience. I went from nervous, uncertain, and shy to looking forward to going into the lab every day, confidence in the projects I worked on, more confident in my career trajectory, and a gain of great connections and new friends.

I had my final shadowing opportunity of the summer at the beginning of this week, shadowing a trauma surgeon, Dr. Scheeler. I watched how rounds were performed, outlining treatment plans of various patients with the physician assistants and residents. Throughout this, I followed Dr. Scheeler as he supervised treatment of a hematoma surgery and an infected cut. I also got to talk to two first-year residents about advice on medical school, residency, and a career in medicine. After watching another hematoma removal, Dr. Scheeler led the rounds and treatment plans via Epic.

I enjoyed my shadowing experience; talking to the residents and how much work they put in made me really think hard about if I want to truly pursue a career in medicine. It was a good reality check as well as a valuable experience in a typical day for trauma surgery.

Overall, I was able to get a good amount of shadowing hours over the summer. I appreciate Dr. St. Louis and the sleep lab allowing the interns to utilize the Mayo connections to explore other areas of medicine. Shadowing was much more valuable than I originally thought; it opened my eyes to a lot of the day-to-day operations of specific disciplines. I think it reaffirmed all of the right things for me and my thoughts on my future career, but it also made me think more about what I really want to go into and balancing the years of schooling and fellowship with having a life, something I hadn’t put too much thought into before.

This week was a fantastic week for the Charles Bonnet Syndrome project as well. I spent a majority of the week organizing the data into age and gender regression, as well as setting up the data to run a few groups: CBS patients and their controls, CBS patients on antidepressants and their controls, and CBS patients on antidepressants compared to other CBS patients. The stats took a while to reach their final form, with some tweaking needed for adding and subtracting a few people due to file quality.

When I ran them, we did find significance in several data points that will undoubtedly be more in-depth in the presentation. The cool thing about this is we now have publishable paper data. In the upcoming months, the five of us interns will collaborate from our respective colleges to make a manuscript that can hopefully be published sometime next year. The status of the hypocretin project is unknown. Dr. St. Louis said there is potential for a negative finding, but CBS and its positive finding is taking the forefront now.

We had two get-togethers this week as end-of-the-summer parties. One was at our direct supervisor Paul’s house, without Dr. St. Louis, who was out of town. We had a great time playing corn hole, and Paul let us all have a turn with his VR headset. The second gathering was at a delicious pizza place, and we all had a good time just chatting and enjoying the last days of the internship.

At the beginning of the summer, Paul had said that  “the point of the internship is how much you learned not only about science and potential future career interests, but also about working collaboratively on a team in quasi-professional setting.”

Regarding learning about science, I think that box is checked. Not only did I have a deep dive into CBS, HCT, neuroscience and sleep, and various other topics from journal club, but I learned about the process of research even further. I think I got a good grasp on how a medical institution conducts record research, which I would hope to do when I become a physician someday.

I enjoyed learning about this research process, including running the statistics and compiling background research. I particularly enjoyed theorizing the neuroanatomical reasons for both the HCT and the CBS project.

The connections I made at Mayo will hopefully be something I can pull on and continue to grow in the coming years. I would say my teamwork development was grown as well.

The fellowship, therefore, by both Paul’s standards and my own, was an awesome success. I want to thank everyone in the sleep lab that made it possible, as well as everyone at Cornell that helped to give me the opportunity to work at Mayo.