Surgical shadow update!

Well I finished my surgical shadow today. Frankly I’m exhausted, maybe I was just too excited, but I got roughly zero sleep last night. That said, it went better than the last shadow where I had just gotten my second dose of vaccine the day before. Now that was not my idea of a fun time! So per the usual I cannot go into the details, but I can talk vaguely about what happened and what’s next.

While I enjoy being given the chance to sit in and watch, it wasn’t for fun. The reason I’m watching the surgery, and why I’ve sat in, in the past, is because they are using similar techniques that we use in the lab. The difference being most of the stuff they do is invasive because the person they are working with is already having surgery, which is typically far more invasive than anything they would be doing. It gives me a chance to see what the underlaying data look like basically. It’s like using EEG vs being able to use ECoG (recording directly from the surface of the brain).

Now that things have calmed down (and the caffeine has worn off) I’m feeling exhausted!!!!!! Still I learned a lot and got some interesting info from the people I was with. Plus, I got to watch another cool spinal surgery, which how can you even not want to watch that? Okay, to be fair I can imagine some not being interested in seeing a spinal cord in person, but I was thrilled.

Since we now have a good understanding of what we’re looking for based on the stuff they did, we can attempt to replicate it as best as we can in the lab and hope that we find something cool in the process. This is where I get really bummed that I can’t talk about the experiment because it’s awesome, it’s going to answer a very cool question, and it has the potential to help people.

Basically this is all the reasons I got into this program to begin with and the best part is I’m in charge of the project. Which is nice because I’m just starting out and trying to get my name out there in the field. Having my name attached to the paper that this will lead to will be a great thing for me and something I’m going to be really proud of. Not that the other papers I’m working on aren’t stuff to be proud of, but this will be the first paper on the stuff I really want to be doing for my career.

Anyway short post today since I’m trying my hardest not to fall asleep while writing this (seriously). I’ve got some journal paper updates I can share, but we’ll get to that tomorrow maybe. In the meantime I’m going to plan how I think we should perform the experiments and probably catch a nap because there’s no way I can function well on so little sleep.