Week 2 - McCoy

Following my first week in the hospital, I had the opportunity to continue to shadow Dr. Boockvar as he did his clinical rotations in his clinic that sits across the street from the hospital. Here, he met individually with patients and went through a host of different situations. The first patient, 93 years old, which we met with, appeared to have a growth within his neck, causing slight pressure on one of his vertebra. The symptoms that the patient reported were slight numbing of the fingers and toes, MRI scans had confirmed what Dr. Boockvar had suspected was the likely cause, though the size of the growth had not changed significantly within the time period that they had been watching it and a following biopsy reported that the growth was benign and not particularly aggressive. Following this, he opted for a watchful waiting approach and recommended that the patient come back within 6 months for another MRI and a follow up examination.

This week I was also able to see different diagnostic tools in action as I followed Dr. Boockvar around; I was able to have glimpses into his methods and ideas for diagnosis and asked him about the thought algorithms that he used in order to reach what he felt were satisfying conclusions. He stated that while an index of knowledge about your specialty is crucial to operating as a doctor, much of what he knows comes from experience with the disease. He looked at many patients as a second opinion and could tell from MRI scans what kinds of tumors each patient likely had as each had their own tell-tale signs and unique characteristics on the different scans.  We also began to discuss my project, which might involve analysis of data that he has been collected from his own sets of studies, wanting me to possibly assess the efficacy of different chemotherapies/radiotherapies in his patients. I am incredibly excited to begin work and I look forward learning even more about the brain!