Two Worlds Come Together
Research or Medicine? I have asked myself this question over and over again, and still I do not know which one I would like to pursue as a career. But yesterday something really interesting happened - I saw the two fields in action together, working simultaneously, one building upon the other.
For one of my experiments yesterday, I needed to get fresh blood from a sickle cell patient, which I would then immediately transfer to a tube with PPACK. So I had to go to the sickle cell clinic here at Duke. Sitting in the clinic in my lab coat, with my box of tubes and solutions and pipets, I watched as the doctors came and went. When the patient I needed came in, everyone went to work. The hospital administrators went to the patient with the consent forms we needed to try and get the patient to participate in the study. The patient, excited to be part of the study, consented to being drawn twice so that we could get the blood we needed. The nurse drew the patient's blood in the special tube I requested and handed it over to someone who delivered it to me. I rushed to an unused room and added the PPACK immediately and my sample was ready for my experiment. In the long term, the chain of events will hopefully reverse. If my study goes well, then eventually drugs can be created to stop the monocyte, platelet, and reticuolocyte aggregates that form in sickle cell patients' blood. These drugs can then be administered to the patient. And the really cool thing is that maybe the people who donated their blood for our experiments will be the ones who benefit.
During this whole process, what I found really interesting was how well the two fields can work together. The doctors and hospital administrators were very willing to help us get the blood we needed for our study. The patient was enthusiastic about being a part of a study that in the end could potentially help her. I was determined not to let this precious blood we had gotten go waste. Medicine helping research, research helping medicine. It is a really cool concept to see in action. It was my PI who made all of this possible. A part of both worlds, she essentially ties the two together by being a doctor who sees sickle cell patients and at the same time runs a lab where new research is being done to help her patients.
Does this mean I am leaning towards an MD/PHD program in the future? I don't know. All I know at this point is that i am fascinated by the way that the medical and research fields can be so so intertwined.
