Week 4: Conference Calls and Lemons

Hey! Hope you had an absolutely fantastic week guys! I'm back with an update on how things are going at the ol' clinic.

Everyone Reading This

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First, as always, an update on what I'm doing academically.

Interestingly, I'm already done with the work my supervisors prepared for me, both to answer my research question and to help them with documentation. That is to say, I've completed the first version of my spreadsheet of Core Lab and Clinical Trial comparisons, complete with ungodly amounts of patient data. Now I'm making graphs and forming conclusions out of the data. (Something which Excel is helping me out with WAY more than I initially imagined.) Once I've studied my graphical trends enough, I should, in theory, be able to answer my question of which method (Core Lab or Clinical Trial) of data collection on lesions is more effective and/or more efficient. But am I satisfied with that? Ha! No. My two most recent days on-site I've been asking for other jobs to do, so that I may tie then into my SRP somehow.

One interesting job I got involved OsiriX, a high quality photo storing and editing software. I had to censor patient data for reports and ultrasounds before they became 'public domain', so to speak, for doctors everywhere to use in teachings and presentations. The craziest thing is, I recognized one or two of the names I came across from earlier data collection. Small world. Anyway, at first, progress was slow, for I had little to no idea what I was doing. But I'm nothing if not a software junkie, and I quickly learned the in's and out's of what I could do with OsiriX, to the point where I was flying through the pictures 10 times as fast as before. Add in the fact that I started listening to Two Steps From Hell on my phone, and I was nigh unstoppable for upwards of two hours.

While I was censoring data, I couldn't help but notice some big, bold text at the top of the screen, reading: "NOT FOR MEDICAL USE WITHOUT A LICENSE. CLICK HERE TO BUY LICENSE." I turn to my supervisor Kelly.

"So when do you plan on buying the license for this?"

"Oh...y'know...sometime." Heh.

please tell me someone gets this joke

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Conference Calls
I was allowed to attend a meeting again this week, except this time we had a phone to have another group speak up during the meeting despite being elsewhere. But first we had to set up the conference call. And judging by the look everyone was giving each other, this was something no one wanted to do. I almost felt a game of "onetwothree not it" coming on, when-

"Ugh, fine, I'll do it," said my supervisor Christine.

She brings back the telephone and dials in a number.
"Please enter the confirmation number." She does that.
"Please enter the conference number." She does that.
"Please hold." She holds.
"If you want to _____ press 1. If you want to _____ press 2." It prattled on for 9 numbers. I quickly realized that one had to wait till it finished before punching in a number.
"Now re-enter the confirmation number." She does that. We have successfully set up the call. Someone also told me afterward that if you messed up even one number, you had to start over. Ouch.

During the call everyone was getting pretty excited over what appeared to be a possible grant for the CORE Lab and all its members. Apparently there was a 50% chance they'd get the grant over another department of Mayo, and this all depended on a higher power's judgement. So essentially, we had to convince this higher power how awesome we were. Someone brought up NVidia (the graphics cards both many high end video games and many medical imaging softwares use), citing that the higher-up we were appealing to was a gamer. I failed to put 2 and 2 together, but it somehow caught on with the rest and within 5 minutes we had arrived at the most slippery slope known to mankind.

Essentially, since we used NVidia graphics cards for lesion scanning and the same cards were used for gaming and the one with the authority to give us cash money was a gamer then it follows that if we mention our liberal use of graphics cards then he'll like us and give us said cash money. QED.

And that's exactly what we did.

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Lemons
While I was working, someone whom I didn't know walked into the room, continued walking straight up to me, and held out a bag full of lemons. And these lemons were, in a word, gigantic.

Ok, so they weren't that big, but you get the idea.

"Would you like a lemon?"

I cautiously picked up one of the smaller ones and thanked him. I felt better when he offered them everyone else in the room as well. It was still completely random though. I haven't seen that guy since.

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And finally, my supervisor Kelly had her last day at Mayo last Tuesday. She found another job that she wanted to take up, so she resigned her spot here. Goodbye and good luck Kelly! I will miss your ever-helpful demeanor towards me, but more than that, I will miss your massive snark. Stay chill. :)