Thursday

Our final day was full of surprises and odd procedures. First, Dr. Demarco and his colleague examined a patient who had radiation treatment for colorectal cancer, which made areas of his rectum inflammed; demarco used a tool that burnt the surface of the inflamed areas so that further inflammation would not be possible. After that, another procedure was done where the woman was anemic from being stabbed 10 times in the head which accounted for all of the blood loss which lead to the anemia; she needed a colonoscopy, but ate food beforehand, which made it absolutely disgusting to watch. 

The first consultation of the day was a symbol of how much I have progressed through my time here at Baylor; a woman who had colorectal cancer 3 years ago (that had had it treated completely) came in because of abdominal pain in the same area over and over again. After alot of questions, it became apparent that a certain area of her colon was constricting, making it hard for food to be digested; the conclusion was that she needed a colonoscopy to dilate the constricted area, increasing the flow of digested material through the already shortened colon. This case was so interesting, I decided to attend the procedure tomorrow, even though I am already done with my hours, and for this reason I feel like this case represents my experience at Baylor - actual interest in scientific exploration of the body, no matter how stomach-churning the procedures can be. 

We then went to a conference presented by a doctor on CML, or chronic myeloid leukemia. Dr Cooper said that the leukemia  comes about through translocation in meiosis of the presence of the 22nd q- chromosome, or the Philadelphia chromosome. This chromosome leads to a high platelet count in the blood. Although very confusing, the lecture had a lot of good information on leukemia which I didn't know anything about. The conferences during the week have been informative, but today's presentation taught me a huge amount of information about white blood cells and leukemia in general. 

The last portion of the day was spent at Dr. Demarco's office, where we were presented with limitless information on the different types of scopes used to perform colonoscopies/ endoscopies. What amazed me about the scopes was that some of them were actually developed by Dr. Demarco himself, who has been pioneering the progress of scope-effectiveness with another engineer; I never knew how incredibly lucky I was to follow such a prominent figure in gastroenterology. 

Today, although my last official day, was the most diverse in information given and procedures seen, making a fitting end to a great mentorship; tomorrow's procedure should be the grand finale to an amazing experience.