Grand Rounds

     Every Thursday morning all the surgical residents go to Grand Rounds. For grand rounds we all meet in a large lecture hall and have an hour lecture on different medical and surgical topics, and because this is Hopkins we have had some phenomenal speakers. I am just so impressed each and every week by the amazing things these physicians are doing or have accomplished in their careers. Today the lecture was titled "Marshaling the Immune System to Cure Cancer." A lot of the lecture was a bit too scientific more me to understand at this point in my training. The speaker was Drew Pardoll, M.D. Ph.D who has dedicated the past 30 years of his life to cancer research and has been able to develop vaccines that are showing incredibly promising result in helping to cure various types of cancer, he has published over 250 articles on the subject and is in phase three of several clinical trials. To me, this is like meeting a rock star. I can't wait to see where this research goes.
     A few weeks ago we had a grand rounds lecture by Stanley J Dudrick M.D. who first conceived of the idea of total peripheral nutrition during his surgical residency. Everyone said that he was crazy but his rationale was that if we can be fed by a vein in utero then why can't we be fed by a vein in vivo? His experiments we designed using beagle puppies and he was successful in growing them using entirely parenteral nutrition. Then one day after giving a lecture on his beagle puppies a doctor came up to him and told him about a neonate he was taking care of who had a failure to thrive and asked if he would do his "puppy trick" on her. And that little neonate baby girl was the first human to be saved simply by being given nutrition through a vein. He told us in grand rounds that since that day total parenteral nutrition has saved the lives of over 10 million neonates. Not to mention the other millions of lives that he has saved from morbidity and mortality with his research.      It just amazes me that these are the types of doctors that I get to walk the halls with and hear from on a weekly basis. I am truly lucky to be learning at this amazing institution.

Thanksgiving

     This year for Thanksgiving I was so grateful that I was able to take the entire day off and my sister Christine flew out from Salt Lake City to spend it with me. I'm also grateful for my brother-in-law Peter who understood that I needed my sister for Thanksgiving a little bit more that he needed his wife and was happy to let her come visit for a few days.  It was a very short trip for her. She flew in Tuesday night and Alison, Steve, and I picked her up at the DC Reagan airport. This was nice because we drove around and showed Christine the quick tour of DC monuments.

Lincoln Memorial

     The next day after I was done with work I took Christine out to explore my little neighborhood in Fell's. We went to one of my favorite little sea food places called The Point and she got to taste the local crab cakes.... AMAZING! I really liked showing her around my new home and city.

In front of The Point Restaurant

     Thanksgiving day I took her to see Johns Hopkins Hospital. I gave her the grand tour including my messy on call room where we PA residents try to sleep sometimes but mostly it's just where we store all of our stuff. I showed her the new Bloomberg Children's Hospital. I think the best is the view from the top of Sheikh Zayed Tower that overlooks downtown Baltimore and Inner Harbor.

My view at work

    Thanksgiving dinner we were invited over to the Cornell household by Peter who is the Nurse Practitioner who has been training me my first few weeks at Hopkins. He and his wife were so kind to let us come and his parents were there too and they were very friendly. They have two little girls that are super cute and I brought over a little craft for them to do, where you put gum drops in apples to make a turkey. They loved it! Before dinner his older daughter, Wallace, who is 6 years old asked if we could hold hands and go around the table and say what we are thankful for. She started and said that she was thankful for Mommy and Mary.  Haha, I laughed hard about that and had to tease Peter because she didn't mention Daddy. We had a great time, the food was very good and I even liked the haggis. Peter made me put on the turkey day hat so he could take a picture and send it to everyone on our team.

Mid-levels Eckhauser Team Nov. 13'

Happy Thanksgiving!