Last Week in the City

Overall, my experience at Weill Cornell in New York City has been great and I have learned a lot about neurosurgery, neuroradiology, and neurology in general.

My time with Dr. Gauthier provided me with unique patient interactions and a broader perspective about how patients deal with chronic conditions, ongoing clinical studies, new drug trials and releases (ocrelizumab was recently approved for multiple sclerosis), insurance concerns, and neurological checkups. I was able to see just how complex it is for physicians to work with patients in a continually advancing and growing field.

Furthermore, my time in the OR under Dr. Schwartz allowed me to observe what kinds of instrumentation are used for monitoring patients, working with real-time images, and detecting and outlining surgical sites and targets. I even had a chance to see some of the more emerging technologies such as the neuroblate system for ablating tumors deep within the brain and being able to monitor progression of the procedure on an MRI in real time. I am grateful to Dr. Schwartz for allowing me (and a small army of students) to shadow him in the OR and as he visited with patients.

I have spent this past week, though, on finishing some preliminary work on a PET imaging project under Yeona Kang. The project gave me some ideas for one of my own projects back home, mostly through a curve-fitting process for an equation. I hope to be done with getting the preliminary results soon and that we may get some significant results.


I'd like to say my time in the city was well spent. I had gone to see some plays on Broadway and was always impressed by the performances. I had gone to some lesser known restaurants and events in addition to many touristic sites. As this is my third time to the city, but the longest I have been here, I was able to skip doing some things and spend more time on others. I also had an opportunity to act as a tour guide for when my girlfriend came to visit me this past weekend.

For some, 7 weeks here may not seem like much, I am unfortunately not a big city person and I'm looking forward to returning to Ithaca tomorrow morning. Even so, I will still keep my experiences and knowledge gained here close at hand.

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