We arrived at the conference room only 10 minutes before the presentation. Dr. L called me and asked where were we only to hear me gasping for air. We didn't took the elevator but chose to climb 2 floors on the stairs as it is faster.Dr. L came in a while later to tell us it's not a big problem we don't have projectors what so ever, we will only be presenting it to a few MOs anyways. And guess who? Prof T the head of the neurology division came in. We approached him before, but he rejected us because he was busy. I guess. Prof L from the cardio department did supervise another group, but just gave the instruction and let them do the elective on their own without any inspection. So I guess we are glad we came to Dr. L.
YL gave the presentation in the end. It's not a problem to any of us should they ask for the details as all of us are involved. That's what we thought. So the guys were picking the presentator the night before, but I was excluded anyhow, since I was there finishing up the report.
Prof. T stopped YL a lot to ask questions. "What is Jendrassik maneouvre?" "So you mean they're all hyper-reflxes?" "Now this is interesting, no reflexes in all? As in 100% absent?" "Back one slide, let me see the percentage. Can you tell me more about the figures?" "So how can you tell me that I can trust your results?" "30%? That's a lot. Are you sure?" But in the end, he just said "Alright, that's fine. Fine.."
We rounded up saying abnormal reflexes can be present in the normal population. But with the Jendrassik maneouvre, a greater grade of reflexes can be elicited.
But what excited us the most, he said it's a publishable material. And asked Dr. L to write it up, or rather, as how we see it, polish it and make it more of a journal material. It was a very subjective study. The whole reflex thing is very subjective, and our research made it scientific. He also said it was a good idea that we carried out this study to prove what everyone always believed in, so it's a really good study. And added a lot of "Good. Good."
It was a call for a lavish dining out. We have finally finished our elective study! I guess. Unless Dr. L called us back and asked us to do further study on the stroke patients.
If you read my other post before, I blogged about us taking the samples from the patients in the hospital. We've been lying yes. But Dr. L was the one who told us to write a report already, that what we've collected thus far is enough for our elective study.
It was funny to think though, that our initial title for our elective study was to find out the normal range of some vision thingy in the normal population through line bissection test. But after we came back from Cambodia, he suggested that we do the collection of data for reflexes as well. We spent one week or so doing a preliminary study, to get a grasps of what it is like tapping everyone with our tendon hammer. And after so much efforts put into the reflex test, Dr. L said we might as well just put aside our line bissection test and concentrate on our reflex test instead. Then again, our ultimate goal was to compare the reflexes in stroke patients to that of the normal population.
So... I also don't know.
But throughout the presentation, we saw a few lies. I don't know if Dr. L knows himself or he was just involved in our lies as well. See, the older adults sample above 40 that we collected in the hospital a few days ago, they were people from the community. They might be having mild cough or were present at the hospital for collection of their high blood pressure or high cholesterol medicine. We asked Dr. L back then about approaching people other than the medical staff, and he said it's fine as long as the people we approached does not have diabetes or neurological problem. BUT, during the presentation, he told Prof. T that our older adults are hospital staff! So... I find a huge pang of guilt for not clarifying. But if we do that, the whole study might not even be fine!
Anyhow... I guess it was still a call for relief. It's over finally. Phew... Anything else we do after this, we don't have to rush for a report or whatsoever. Hurrah
