The fourth week of our projects is coming and going so quickly I barely have time to catch my breath. I’m telling you, there are too few hours in the day to get everything done! But let’s review the week, shall we:
Just Your Average Monday
Not much new happened today. Another Monday meeting with few changes to report in regards to the studies. Then came a long session of scanning and more scanning. I almost broke the machine once...apparently, today was not my lucky day. Instead of getting to stand there mindlessly while it scanned away, the printer decided to keep getting jammed with my papers. Then it would finish scanning because I didn't put the papers in fast enough so I would have to start all over. Or, it would accidentally take two papers with it. Each of these files was, on average, 40 pages each, so how would you feel if everything was going great for the first 27 pages, but then skips just one page! Now you would understand my struggles. It was tear-able, just one big paper mess. Fortunately, I managed to get through it without becoming too frustrated. Below I paused to take a selfie (when no one was around) of the beloved printer when I thought I 'broke it'. I awkwardly walked away after that, and when I came back later it was working perfectly fine, so thank you printer gods!
However, the day perked up when I got to observe a patient go in for an MRI brain scan. This patient was part of the Structural and Functional Neuroimaging in Patients with Headache Disorders study. A brief refresher that this is the study that utilizes the thermode, the R2-D2-like machine that tests a patient’s threshold to heat pain. The thermode can test for both heat and cold pain, but the study only uses heat pain because of its increased accuracy in reporting pain.
Back to the MRI, after preliminary scans had been done, now is where the thermode comes back into the picture. A cord attached to the thermode is passed through a hole in the wall and attached to the patient's arm. Over a period of three 7-minute periods of heating then returning to body temperature then back up again, the MRI brain scan captures the activity in the brain throughout the duration. By doing this, we will be able to look at which areas of the brain are active when one is in pain/discomfort as well as the resting state.
Wow, Wednesday!
Dr. Chong told me either today or Thursday would be the day she would take me over to radiology to have one of the radiologists explain to me the process of analyzing an MRI brain scan. So of course, rather than sit around and wait in excitement, I did some more scanning to pass the time.
Finally, the time came and today was going to be the day! Not only that, but the radiologist to review the MRI brain scan with me would be none other than Dr. Chong’s husband...Dr. Chong! I think they met at Mayo. #HospitalRomance When I muster up the courage, I’ll ask for more details about how they met. I just didn’t think it would be appropriate to ask about their relationship when he was probably taking time out of his busy schedule to explain MRI things to some intern.
Finally, the time came and today was going to be the day! Not only that, but the radiologist to review the MRI brain scan with me would be none other than Dr. Chong’s husband...Dr. Chong! I think they met at Mayo. #HospitalRomance When I muster up the courage, I’ll ask for more details about how they met. I just didn’t think it would be appropriate to ask about their relationship when he was probably taking time out of his busy schedule to explain MRI things to some intern.
We walked into a room that was almost completely dark except for the light coming from multiple computer screens displaying various brain images. I’m sure I said wow in amazement about a million times...in my head, of course. I know I nodded a lot as he went through the thorough process of assessing a patient. The patient we were reviewing had a hemorrhage on the right side of the frontal lobe and previously suffered from severe headaches. The task for radiologists is to find the cause via a CT scan and various sequences of MRI brain scans, each of which focuses on a different aspect of the brain. I admit, I never realized the crazy amount of work that goes into finding the diagnosis for just one patient. When they say they look for all possible causes, they look at ALL possible causes. Medical history, family history, medications, lifestyle, occupation, basically anything related to one’s health they’ll look at. I found it super fascinating! And even after getting all this information, Dr. Chong (the radiologist) told me they still haven’t found the cause of her hemorrhage yet. Because of this, they’re going to wait three months and have her come back in for more scans of her recovery. Maybe then they’ll be able to discover what caused her hemorrhage.
And the brain scans were just as thorough! There was a coronal view (front of the brain to the back), sagittal view (left side of the brain to the back), and axial view (top of the brain to the beginning of the neck). A different scan showed all the arteries in the brain for Dr. Chong (the radiologist) said a possible cause could’ve been a rupture in one of the arteries in which the clot could’ve traveled up into the brain. There was a scan of the veins, too! Radiologists have to know the names of every single vein and artery should the situation arise where one would need to be removed, they know the exact aftereffects of this removal. I know this analysis doesn’t really have anything to do with gender-based concussions, but I’m guessing this is the process they go through to analyze any MRI brain scans. The overarching goal would be to find what is causing the problem in order to find a treatment.
For me, this felt like a lot, so I’ve decided to talk about Thursday in a second post so that I don’t break my word on having more than one post a week. Plus, I’ll be starting the new topic of Dr. Chong and the rest of the department’s new office space with pictures provided. So stay tuned! My kitty thanks you for following along!! :D
