On Meeting the Supervisor

So there we were, sitting in the conference room in the neurology department, all 6 of us in decent smart casual wears, and Dr. L in his formal wear, just back from a course somewhere.

He looked at our results, enquiring all that seemed odd to him. As to how come we could actually get hyperreflexia in ankle jerks. Hah. How should we explain?! It's all so subjective when it comes to grading, what's more we're not exactly doctors, and the whole study is just for our elective. But not for him. His ultimate goal was for us to proceed to the stroke patients. To which we'll later do a comparison with the normal population. Very knowledgable I know. Talking about it gives me the vibes as if I've known so much about stroke already.

Another funny thing that caught his attention was, how come we actually got an "UP" in the plantar reflex when that is actually impossible in normal population! I know I know! With that, it'll be called Babinski sign, and it's in fact only seen in patients with upper motor neuron lesion. And the fact that we have about 30% results with absence of plantar reflex got him even more puzzled. It's supposed to be a hard sign, he said. It's either up or down, and generally in the normal population, it should be down and not up. But with 30% in our datas ticked under absent, he said it's quite unacceptable.

But, he didn't tell us what to do about it.

We were only told to do the overall analysis, and to prepare a full report on our study thus far. Comparison amongst the young adults, reflexes in the left and the right, amongst males and females, as well as to compare the reflexes amongst ourselves. Yes, supposedly the last comparsion should NOT show any difference statistically. The last was of course, to incorporate the latest study amongst the adult above 40, and to do a general comparison between the reflexes in the young and the old. Wow. It's over then! Hurrah!

Now the weekend shall be spent finishing that report. Tell me about writing a scientific report. What's with all those literature review and references. Have you ever seen a journal? God! I cannot believe we actually have to do that when we were all complaining it's the most boring reading material when we had our statistic class last semester. And to be told that we have to go through only 2 journal databases to see if there's any relevant researches done by any other scientists before, gave me quite a migraine already. Not to say the few other powerful databases, even with Pubmed and Ovid, searches regarding "reflex" came back with over 5000 results!

Not only that, Dr. L told us if the report is ready and presentable by Tuesday, he'll get some MOs to see our presentation on Thursday. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? I don't have any problems doing presentation, to tell you the truth. But to present a scientific study, what's more in fornt of the medical peoples, and us barely any medical grads, that's got to require quite some nerves.

My oh my... that's one quite dreadful day... Let's just hope everything goes as planned.

ps1: Babinski sign by laidongth
ps2: Medical library by MCHS Medical Library