Week 4

With the end of the fourth week of being “immersed”, we are now more than halfway through the program. With Spector having returned this week, I resumed my normal schedule of clinic hours, surgeries, and research time. What stood out the most this week this time was not a surgery, but an interaction with one of Dr. Spector’s long-term patients in the clinic. Several years back, this patient had sustained extreme physical trauma to their leg. The resulting damage was so severe that Dr. Spector was “95% sure” the leg wouldn’t have been saved. Regardless, the team of surgeons including Dr. Spector decided to try and repair the leg despite the low chance of success. Fast forward to today, the patient can walk and work normally with only mild discomfort. Dr. Spector remarked that although cases such as these have a very low chance of success, there’s still the possibility of a good outcome and that you should always be motivated to work as hard as you can. This way of thinking resonated with me and I hope to keep this in mind in my own work.


In my last post, I had alluded to issues in determining the diffusion coefficient of molecules in the lab’s vascular platform. After some discussion, we’ve decided to use a semi-infinite slab model of diffusion to simplify the calculations needed. To do this, we would have to alter the mode of molecule delivery into the SMF device. Next week, I will work on accomplishing this to help characterize the transport properties of this platform.

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