Double OR experiments!

It’s official, I just got not one, but two new participants for our study. This will be happening next week and the scary part is they are both on the same day, so it will be more than a full day in the OR, like 12 hours or so for the whole day. Not all of that time will be spent in the OR, thankfully. Every attempt we’ve had thus far in the OR has gotten better and better, so if the pattern holds, we should have some very good data after this next round of participants and I will have more data than I know what to do with.

Even though we’ve had a lot of failures, things have slowly improved with our experiments and how they are performed. I’ve gotten better at connecting things, moving things out of the way of the surgeon and the clinical side, and most importantly (in my mind) we’ve gotten more comfortable being in the OR with everyone. There are a lot of things that have happened behind the scenes and I think we’re finally getting somewhere.

This will be the first time we attempt two experiments in one day. The nice thing is that we will get a modest break between the two procedures (probably…) so not only will we have the memory fresh from the morning experiment, but we will have a chance to try to correct any issues we have in the morning experiment during the afternoon one. Being able to test different ways of doing things in the same day will be nice because normally there is a week or more between experiments, so things you would do differently get a little fuzzy.

The downside is that the equipment needs to be cleaned and organized between experiments, so we’ll have to move all the equipment from our lab to the OR, back to the lab, clean everything, then go back to the OR, only to bring the equipment back in the evening some time. What I’m really trying to say is that the day will be incredibly long. Ideally we will get better as we go, but there’s also the exhaustion factor that needs to be thought of in this situation. I’m not super worried about it, but I think I will be okay.

The good news is that this is the only major thing I have going on next week so it will be a relatively slow week up to the day this happens. I’ve got plenty of things going on next week and not just related to the holidays, but nothing that needs to happen right away.

A short update, but something exciting nonetheless!