Week 2

This week was particularly eye-opening for me. Spending time in the oncology/bone marrow transplant (BMT) ward was both extremely heartbreaking and incredibly formative. Heartbreaking, because patients with leukemia will not survive if they don’t receive a transplant. Formative, because I don’t think I’ve ever learned so much, so fast. What was particularly interesting to me was graft-vs-host disease (GVHD), a topic our team studies back home, but that I didn’t really know much about. It was difficult listening to the medical staff teach me about the disease while simultaneously trying to remember my freshman biology lectures, trying to make connections where I could. I’ve studied epithelial cells, immunosuppression and cancer, but I have a much deeper appreciation for what I’ve learned after seeing how all these components interplay together in the context of disease.

Spending time in the BMT ward, I’ve come to realize that these doctors are a lot like firemen. Doctors here are putting out fires all over the place. Cancer rarely responds how you think (or hope) it will, and physicians constantly need to readjust and modify treatment. From a basic science standpoint, all I see are patient samples with an anonymous identifier. It’s easy to be removed from the patient when all I see is a 1ml sample of plasma with “ABC123” written on it.

Something else I’ve noticed is how subjective medicine can be, especially in the context of GVHD. The disease has various stages which can be interpreted differently by different clinicians. From an engineering standpoint, this was borderline blasphemy! I’m so used to exact numbers and values, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of diagnosis being subjective.

All in all, I feel incredibly lucky to have joined the BMT service at this time. The research group is working on some absolutely amazing things and has included me in every step they could. Since I’ve committed myself to a career in science, my goal has been to work on something that will eventually make its way to the clinic, where it can help people. In the BMT lab, I had the chance to see it happen in the form of a clinical trial. I was shown how an idea can start from a simple idea and have its concept shown in the context of basic science research. From there, it is tested in pre-clinical trials, moves onto full clinical trials and if all goes well, makes its way to standard care. To see the results of years of hard work finally make its way to helping people reinforced my decision to work in health care research.


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